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FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D.  ROCKHFELLHR 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  ENGLISH 

NON-DRAMATIC  BLANK 

VERSE 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY 

OF  THE 

GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS  AND  LITERATURE 

IN  CANDIDACY  FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF 

DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT  OF  ENGLISH 


BY 
EDWARD   PAYSON    MORTON 


CHICAGO 
R.  R.  DONNELLEY  &  SONS  CO. 

1910 


Ube  XHniverstti?  ot  Cbicaoo 

FOUNDED   BY  JOHN    D.  ROCKEFELLER 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  ENGLISH 
NON-DRAMATIC  BLANK 
. VERSE 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY 

OF  THE 

GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS  AND  LITERATURE 

IN  CANDIDACY  FOR  THE   DEGREE  OF 

DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT  OF  ENGLISH 


BY 

EDWARD  PAYSON   MORTON 


CHICAGO 

R.  R.  DONNELLEY  &  SONS  CO. 

igio 


Copyright,  1910 

BY 

E.   P.   MORTON 


TO 

MY  FATHER  AND  MOTHER 


239377 


CONTENTS 

Introduction    .  .  .  .  .3-8 

This  study  examines  the  metrics  of  a  large  quan- 
tity of  English  non-dramatic  blank  verse,  exclud- 
ing the  drama,  into  which  other  considerations 
enter  (p.  3).  Blank  verse  our  simplest,  most  flex- 
ible form,  but  should  not  be  praised  by  disparaging 
other  forms  (p.  4).  Its  conventions;  'lyric  blank 
verse,  (p.  5).  The  poets  here  studied  (p.  6),  and 
the  significance  of  the  facts  about  them  (p.  7). 

I.    Lines         .....    9-37 

Terms  defined  and  discussed.  Commastopt  (p.  9), 
run-on  (p.  lo),  endstopt  (p.  11),  and  unbroken  lines 
(p.  12),  not  matters  of  sentence-length,  or  punctua- 
tion (p.  13).  Feminine  (p.  15),  and  unstressed  end- 
ings (p.  16).  Tables  I  and  II:  the  four  kinds  of 
lines  in  blank  verse  and  in  the  heroic  couplet 
(pp.  18-19).  .     . 

The  wide  range  of  the  percentages;  variations 
from  Milton's  figures;  the  proportion  of  run-on 
lines  not  a  certain  measure  of  movement  (p.  20). 
Endstopt  lines  frequent;  relation  of  run-on  and 
endstopt  lines  not  clear.  Commastopt  lines  corol- 
laries to  others,  and  vary  in  force  (p.  21).  Un- 
broken lines  used  most  freely  by  the  greater  poets. 
Comparison  of  blank  verse  and  the  couplet  shows: 
more  uniformity  among  users  of  couplets;  more 
endstopt  and  fewer  run-on  lines  than  in  blank  verse, 
and  more  unbroken  lines  (p.  22).  Unbroken  lines 
a  measure  of  line-rhythm    (p.  23). 

Note  on  Paragraphs.  Beginning  a  paragraph  in 
the  middle  of  a  line  an  indication  of  a  tendency  to 
subordinate  the  line-unit;   some  figures    (p.   25). 

Table  III:  feminine  and  unstressed  endings 
(p.  27).  Feminine  endings  little  used  except  in 
drama  (p.  28);  their  quality  (p.  29).  Unstressed 
endings  avoided  in  the  i8th  century  (p.  30),  but  in 
the   19th  more  used  than  feminine  endings.     Dis- 


CONTENTS 

tribution  of  feminine  and  unstressed  endings  be- 
tween run-on  and  endstopt  lines  varies  (p.  32). 
Poets  rarely  use  two  devices  in  combination  (p.  33). 
Note  on  Rhyme.  In  blank  verse  the  opportunity 
for  'repetition'  not  often  seized  (p.  33). 

II.  C^SURAS  .  .  .  .     38-63 

Caesura  defined  and  discussed  (p  38) ;  'strong 
pauses'  (p.  39) ;  two  or  more  caesuras  in  a  line 
(Table  IV:  percentage  of  lines  with  more  than  one 
caesura),  and  their  frequence  (p.  40).  Ability  of  the 
caesura  to  modify  line-rhythm  greater  in  blank 
verse  than  in  the  couplet,  and  in  blank  verse  varies 
with  the  proportion  of  endstopt  lines  (p.  41).  Cae- 
suras in  trisyllabic  feet  relatively  few  (p.  42),  but 
raise  question  of  'extra-metricality';  illustrations 
(p-  43)>  and  discussion  (p.  44).  The  part  played 
by  the  caesura  in  the  time  of  the  line  illustrated 
(p.  45)  to  show  that  it  merely  modifies  the  rate  of 
delivery  (p.  45).  Tables  V  and  VI:  caesuras 
(pp.  48-9). 

Little  uniformity  of  usage;  the  pause  after  the 
4th  syllable  usually  the  most  frequent  (p.  49).  Di- 
versity of  practice  illustrated;  the  tendency  of  the 
iambic  line  to  break  at  the  ends  of  feet  (p.  51). 
Distribution  of  caesuras  (p.  52)  ;  variations  from 
Milton;  monotony  of  pause  (p.  53).  Conclusions 
(p.  54).  Comparison  of  total  caesuras  with  'strong 
pauses*  shows  greater  tendency  of  strong  pauses  to 
the  middle  of  the  line,  in  couplets  as  in  blank  verse 
(p.  55)-  'Severity'  of  breaks  not  notable  in  Milton 
(p.  56).  The  men  who  have  the  widest  distribution 
of  caesuras  have   also  many  unbroken  lines    (p.   57)- 

Table  VII:  'run-on'  caesuras  (p.  58).  *Run-on' 
caesuras  explained  (p.  59)  :  most  frequent  in  the 
greater  poets,  as  shown  by  figures  (p.  60).  Lines 
*run-on'  from  a  caesura  near  the  end  more  often 
than  to  a  caesura  near  the  beginning.  'Run-on' 
caesuras  most  frequent  after  the  7th  syllable  (p.  61). 
In  blank  verse,  'run-on'  caesuras  near  the  end  of  the 
line  modify  the  line-rhythm;  but  in  the  couplet  in- 
crease rhyme-emphasis  (p.  62). 

III.  Feet      .....     64-79 
Puzzling    lines    in    non-dramatic   blank   verse    rela- 
tively  few,   and   to   be  explained   in   several   ways 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

(p.  64),  but  many  are  explicable  by  a  simple  prin- 
ciple. Distribution  of  emphasis  the  source  of  effect- 
iveness in  both  poetry  and  prose  (p.  65).  Blank 
verse  like  prose  in  sentence-length  and  word-order 
(p.  66);  unlike  prose  in  its  regular  rhythm  (p.  67). 
Mr.  T.  S.  Omond's  statement  of  the  relation  of 
syllables  to  time  applied  to  blank  verse  (p.  68). 

Substitution  of  trisyllabic  feet  (p.  69),  which  are 
'duple  time'  anapests.  Trochees  most  common  at 
the  beginning  of  the  line  (p.  71),  but  many  are  de- 
batable. Trochees  are  instances  where  the  logical 
and  metrical  accents  do  not  coincide  (p.  73);  as  a 
rule  the  metrical  accent  yields,  but  not  always 
(p.  74).  Changes  in  practice  indicate  increasing  sub- 
ordination of  the  rhythm  (p.  76).  Initial  trochees 
sometimes  emphasized  by  caesuras,  but  the  caesuras 
also  furnish  various  divisions,  as  illustrated  (p.'77)» 
and  discussed  (p.  78).  These  variations  help  to  give 
the  cadences  of  verse,  but  cadences  are  not  often 
solely  variations  in  arrangement  of  stressed  and  un- 
stressed syllables  (p.  79). 

IV.  Tone-Quality              .            .  .     80-82 
Tone-quality    is    not    a    part    of    the  special    tech- 
nique of  blank  verse,  but  belongs  both  to  prose  and 
verse    (p.  80). 

V.  Summary  and  Comment         .  .    83-90 

Blank  verse  has  a  minimum  of  requirements,  and 
therefore  lends  itself  to  a  wide  range  of  rhetorical 
styles  (p.  83),  but  has  no  'standard'  or  'formal' 
type  (p.  84).  The  proportions  of  run-on  lines  furn- 
ish no  measure  of  'strictness'  as  in  the  couplet; 
caesuras,  however,  are  more  important  than  in  the 
couplet,  and  their  distribution  is  the  most  important 
detail  in  the  technique  of  blank  verse  (p.  85).  Fem- 
inine and  unstressed  endings  are  little  used,  and  are 
therefore  rarelj^  important  (p.  86).  Writers  of  non- 
dramatic  blank  verse  have  been  careful  both  of  the 
iambic  rhythm  and  of  the  five-beat  line.  Historical 
study  shows  that  endstopt  and  unbroken  lines,  and 
feminine  endings  have  increased;  that  run-on  lines 
and  caesuras  at  the  ends  of  feet  have  grown  fewer; 
that  caesuras  near  the  ends  of  the  line  are  more  fre- 
quent and  emphatic  (p.  87).  These  changes  point 
to  subordination  of  the  rhythm  and  to  greater  atten- 

vii 


CONTENTS 

tion   to   the    effects   of   varying   quantity.  The   most 

common    misconception    of    blank    verse  consists    in 

failure  to  distinguish  technical  details  (p.  88),  as 
illustrated  by  Milton  (p.  89). 

VL     The    Individual    Poets    (Arranged 

chronologically)     .  .  .    91-129 

♦^Surrey,  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of 91-2 

Gascoigne,  George  91-2 

^Milton,  John    93-6 

Philips,  John    97 

Watts,   Isaac    97 

Newcomb,  Thomas    98-9 

^Thomson,  James    99-101 

Mallet,   David    loi 

Somervile,  William   102 

Glover,  Richard   102-3 

Young,   Edward    104-5 

Blair,  Robert   106 

Akenside,   Mark    107-8 

Shenstone,  William   108 

^-Cowper,  William    109-10 

Landor,  Walter  Savage i  lo-i  i 

i-  Wordsworth,   William    111-13 

»^Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe 113-14 

^Keats,  John    11S-18 

^  Arnold,   Matthew    1 18-19 

i-  Browning,  Robert    120-23 

t  Tennyson,  Alfred   124-25 

^  Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles 126-29 


INTRODUCTION 

This  study  is  an  attempt  to  examine  some  consid- 
erable quantities  of  English  non-dramatic  blank 
verse,  with  the  hope  of  pointing  out  some  conven- 
tions in  the  use  of  the  metre,  and  of  checking  up 
some  of  the  current  notions  about  the  subject.  I  have 
confined  myself  to  non-dramatic  blank  verse  (not  ex- 
cluding, of  course,  occasional  comparisons  with 
dramatic  blank  verse,  and  with  other  verse  forms) 
because  in  the  drama  the  verse  is  for  the  most  part 
a  secondary  feature,  inasmuch  as  the  dramatist  wish- 
es ordinarily  to  get  an  illusion  of  life  or  of  reality, 
and  therefore  subordinates  or  modifies  his  verse  to 
suit  dramatic  necessities.  It  is  true  that  historically 
English  blank  verse  acquired  its  flexibility  through 
the  drama,  but  the  blank  verse  written  by  Milton  and 
his  successors  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
blank  verse  of  Shakspere's  later  plays  or  of  those  of 
the  other  dramatists  of  that  generation.  The  failure 
to  discriminate  between  dramatic  and  non-dramatic 
blank  verse  has  led  often  to  debating  whether  such 
and  such  a  device  is  admissible,  when  as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  is  found  almost  entirely  in  dramatic  blank 
verse,  and  there  for  dramatic  rather  than  metrical 
reasons.  For  example,  the  question  of  six-beat  lines 
in  blank  verse  reduces  itself  to  something  like  this : 
In  a  verse-form  like  the  rigid  heroic  couplet,  for 
instance,  a  six-beat  line  at  the  end  of  the  couplet  was 
often,  like  a  triplet,  a  concession  to  the  limitations  of 
the  verse- form.  In  the  drama,  a  line  divided  be- 
tween two  or  more  speakers  might  be  a  beat  long 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

or  a  beat  short  (that  is,  it  might  be  made  up  of  two 
three-beat  phrases,  or  two  two-beat  ones,  or  a  four 
and  a  two)  without  disturbing  the  swing  of  the 
rhythm,  because  the  auditors  would  not  notice  an 
excess  or  deficiency  that  was  hidden  by  the  break 
between  the  speeches.  Hearers,  moreover,  would 
not  be  as  sensitive  as  readers  to  occasional  six-beat 
lines  in  the  middle  of  speeches.  In  non-dramatic 
blank  verse,  however,  the  demand  for,  or  the  op- 
portunity for  metrical  license  of  this  sort  is  lacking, 
and  six-beat  lines,  even  possible  ones,  are  so  few  as 
to  be  negligible. 

When  looked  at  from  a  purely  theoretical  point 
of  view,  blank  verse  is  the  most  flexible  and  adapt- 
able of  our  English  verse-forms,  because  it  has  the 
fewest  arbitrary  metrical  requirements.  Stripped 
of  various  minor  rules  which,  as  we  shall  see,  change 
somewhat  from  generation  to  generation,  blank 
verse  demands  of  the  poet  merely  five-beat  lines 
with  a  prevailingly  iambic  swing.  It  sets  no  restric- 
tions upon  sentence-length  or  paragraph-length,  as 
do  stanza-forms,  and  even  the  heroic  couplet.  It 
lends  itself  equally  well  to  short,  pithy,  sententious, 
or  staccato  sentences,  and  to  long  flowing  periods. 
It  serves  unobtrusively  as  a  vehicle  for  quiet  pedes- 
trian material,  raised  above  prose  chiefly  by  the 
rhythm;  or  for  the  expression  of  moods  so  intense, 
or  grave,  or  delicate,  that  more  formal  devices  might 
stamp  them  as  declamatory  or  insincere. 

This  very  fact,  that  blank  verse  makes  so  few 
requirements,  has  led  to  two  errors  of  attitude,  both 
sometimes  serious.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  worth 
while  to  avoid  praising  blank  verse  in  terms  of  dis- 
praise of  other  forms.  For  example,  blank  verse 
seems  to  oflfer  peculiar  advantages  to  both  poet  and 
reader  in  various  long  poems,  such  as  disquisitions 
like  the  Excursion  or  the  Ring  and  the  Book;  or 


INTRODUCTION 

narratives  like  Sohrab  and  Rustum;  or  mixtures  of 
both  like  Paradise  Lost.  But  let  us  recall  the  un- 
flagging ease  and  vivacity  of  Chaucer's  Troilus, 
which  is  in  the  rhyme- royal  stanza ;  of  Byron's  Don 
Juan,  in  ottava  rima;  of  the  Faery  Queen,  in  a  still 
more  intricate  stanza;  of  Endymion,  or  if  that  be 
thought  too  Hke  blank  verse  in  its  technique,  of 
Dryden's  Palamon  and  Arcite,  or  of  Pope's  Homer, 
which  still  grips  high  school  boys  as  it  did  Pope's 
own  generation.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  necessary 
to  discriminate  between  effects  which  are  really  the 
result  of  metrical  technique  and  effects  which  are 
primarily  rhetorical,  and  which  are  prominent  in 
blank  verse  just  because  of  the  unobtrusiveness  of 
its  metrics. 

Most  of  the  conventions  of  non-dramatic  blank 
verse,  in  fact,  spring  from  its  very  unobtrusive- 
ness. Inasmuch  as  the  five  beat&  and  the  iambic 
rhythm  are  practically  its  only  fundamentals,  its 
users  have  generally  been  careful  to  keep  both.  In- 
deed, with  no  rhyme  to  indicate  line-rhythm,  or  to 
affect  sentence-length  or  structure,  four-beat  or  six- 
beat  lines  are  not  only  unnecessary,  but  disturbing. 
At  least  the  poets  seem  to  have  felt  so,  for  fractional 
lines  and  alexandrines  are  very  few  indeed  in  the 
poets  here  studied.^  Moreover,  rhymeless  measures 
in  other  than  five-beat  lines  have  proved  both  difficult 
and  unsatisfactory.  Even  in  Samson  Agonistes,  the 
choral  passages  are  accompanied  by  rhyme  and  as- 
sonance :  'blank  verse  odes'  like  Thomas  Fletcher's  or 
James  Ralph's  (which  are  simply  lawless  Pindarics 
carried  a  step  farther  by  the  omission  of  rhyme)  are 

1  Cowley,  in  the  couplets  of  his  Davideis,  introduced 
incomplete  lines,  and  in  a  note  reminded  his  readers 
that  he  was  following  Virgil.  Cowley  also  informed 
his  readers  that  his  occasional  alexandrines  were  used 
deliberately,  and  not  carelessly. 

5 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

few  in  number ;  and  Collins's  Ode  to  Evening  is  the 
one  exquisite  success  of  a  long  series  of  attempts 
from  Milton  down.  Collins's  ode  illustrates  inci- 
dentally the  advantage  in  blank  verse  of  the  five- 
beat  rhythm,  for  more  than  one  critic  has  printed 
stanzas  from  Collins  in  three  lines  instead  of  four, 
finding  nothing  in  the  cadences  of  the  two  short  lines 
to  distinguish  them  as  separate  lines.  'Lyric  blank 
verse,'  therefore,  whether  we  include  all  rhymeless 
lyric  poems,  or  apply  the  term  only  to  such  five-beat 
passages  as  Tennyson's  "Tears,  idle  tears,"  makes 
use  of  various  special  devices  because  of  its  lyric 
purpose,  and  should  consequently  be  as  sharply  dis- 
criminated as  dramatic  blank  verse  from  the  verse 
we  are  here  concerned  with. 

A  word  is  necessary  about  the  choice  of  poets 
whose  blank  verse  is  here  studied.  Milton,  Words- 
worth, Keats,  Browning,  and  Tennyson — all  of  them 
but  Keats  extensive  users  of  non-dramatic  blank 
verse — demand  a  place  in  any  comparative  study. 
To  these  I  have  added  others,  partly  by  design, 
partly  at  haphazard.  Surrey  and  Gascoigne  I  have 
put  in,  both  because  they  were  very  early  practi- 
tioners, and  because  their  pioneer  crudities  are  often 
illuminating.  Young  should  be  added,  it  seemed  to 
me,  because  it  is  interesting  to  compare  some  ex- 
tremely popular  1 8th  century  blank  verse  with  what 
we  now  find  most  admirable.  Young,  of  course, 
suggested  comparison  with  Thomson,  and  Thomson 
with  his  predecessor  Philips  and  with  his  friend 
Mallet,  whose  Excursion  promised  possible  con- 
trasts with  Wordworth's.  Newcomb,  Blair,  Glover, 
Somervile,  Shenstone,  and  Watts  owe  their  presence 
here  not  to  any  special  importance,  but  to  the  acci- 
dent that  interest  in  them  for  other  reasons  led  me 
to  examine  their  blank  verse  and  to  add  their  little 
'sum  of  more.'    In  Cowper  I  felt  I  was  adding  an- 


INTRODUCTION 

other  i8th  century  poet  whose  blank  verse  has  al- 
ways been  spoken  of  with  respect;  Landor  came  in 
because  I  was  curious  to  see  what  kind  of  blank 
verse  he  published  in  the  year  of  the  "Lyrical  Bal- 
lads/' Shelley,  Arnold,  and  Swinburne — especially 
the  last  two — offer  interesting  experiments.  For 
a  history  of  English  non-dramatic  blank  verse,  this 
list  of  poets  would  be  only  a  beginning,  but  for  a 
study  of  its  technique  primarily,  I  think  I  have  a 
wide  enough  range,  both  in  time  and  character,  to 
justify  some  conclusions.  In  all  cases  I  have  taken 
either  complete  poems  or  large  enough  masses  of 
the  longer  ones  to  make  me  feel  that  my  statements 
about  those  particular  poems  are  based  on  definite 
knowledge.  Browning  and  Tennyson  alone,  of  these 
poets,  have  written  a  variety  of  poems  in  blank  verse 
during  a  long  period  of  years;  in  the  case  of  the 
others,  then,  I  am  usually  justified  in  speaking  of  the 
men  rather  than  of  individual  poems.  Long  ago  I 
discovered,  in  the  case  of  the  heroic  couplet,  that 
very  mediocre  poets  often  illustrate  technical  details 
better  than  great  poets,  because  the  small  men  are 
less  skilful  in  concealing  their  art.  A  similar  com- 
parison between  great  and  poor  poets  in  blank  verse 
seemed  likely  to  be  equally  profitable,  although  New- 
comb's  is  the  only  instance  in  this  list  of  a  long 
poem  which  has  not  still  its  admirers  or  was  not 
highly  praised  in  its  own  generation. 

It  is  necessary  also,  I  imagine,  to  say  a  word  about 
the  facts  I  present,  and  their  significance.  I  have 
taken  pains,  and  frequent  checking  up  of  portions  of 
my  work  has  led  me  to  think  it  reasonably  accurate. 
None  of  my  conclusions,  however,  depends  upon 
absolutely  final  winnowing  out  of  a  few  small  grains. 
I  find,  for  instance,  only  one  feminine  ending  in 
the  Seasons;  I  should  not  be  disturbed  if  some  one 
else  found  a  half  dozen  more,  because  the  signifi- 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

cance  of  the  matter  lies  not  in  there  being  only  one 
but  in  there  being  so  few  that  Thomson  must  have 
definitely  avoided  them.  I  have  given  my  figures 
exactly,  as  an  evidence  of  good  faith,  and  not  be- 
cause the  precise  fractions  are  significant.  It  is  of 
no  importance,  for  example,  that  Somervile  should 
have  20.70%  of  his  lines  endstopt,  and  Mallet  only 
20.69;  ^^  ^s  significant,  however,  that  those  men 
should  come  in  a  group  with  many  others  who  have 
between  15  and  30%  of  their  lines  endstopt.  And 
this  leads  to  a  caution  about  my  inferences:  the 
same  reason  which  has  led  me  to  examine  long  pas- 
sages keeps  me  from  laying  stress  on  differences 
between  poem§  which  are  not  of  considerable  length. 
The  variations  between  different  books  of  Paradise 
Lost,  for  instance,  are  often  greater  than  those  be- 
tween two  or  three  minor  poets.  The  danger  of 
drawing  definite  generalizations  from  brief  passages 
is  illustrated  by  the  table  which  Professor  Mayor 
printed  on  page  208  of  the  second  edition  of  his 
"Chapters  on  English  Metre."  Frequently  he  re- 
cords greater  variations  between  different  passages 
from  Tennyson  than  he  finds  between  Tennyson  and 
either  Milton  or  Browning.  That  the  reason  for 
such  differences  may  be  accidental  and  not  metrical 
was  aptly  illustrated  by  the  experience  of  a  student 
who  was  perplexed  to  find  that  in  one  scene  of  As 
You  Like  It  only  28%  of  the  lines  were  endstopt, 
while  in  another  over  50%  were  endstopt.  The  rea- 
son was  that,  although  the  two  scenes  were  of  about 
the  same  length,  one  consisted  of  ten  speeches,  of 
which  only  four  ended  within  the  line ;  while  the 
other  had  twenty-seven  speeches,  of  which  but  five 
ended  within  the  line,  so  that  a  mere  difference  in 
the  length  of  the  speeches — in  the  liveliness  of  the 
dialogue — affected  materially  the  details  of  the  versi- 
fication. 

8 


I.     LINES 

In  order  to  avoid  confusion  I  shall  begin  by  defin- 
ing my  terms  and  explaining  their  limitations. 

Run-on  lines  are  lines  which  without  punctuation 
at  the  end  ''run-on"  into  the  next. 

Endstopt  lines  are  lines  which  end  with  some 
punctuation  other  than  a  comma. 

Commastopt  lines  (which  n^ed  no  definition)  I 
have  kept  separate  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first 
place,  although  some  commastopt  lines  undoubtedly 
have,  in  some  poets,  at  least,  the  force  of  endstopt 
lines,  while  others  are  almost  as  certainly  run-on, 
any  attempt  to  apportion  them  means  hopeless  en- 
tanglement in  the  meshes  of  the  personal  equation. 
In  some  cases,  Tennyson,  for  example,  I  have  tried 
distributing  the  commastopt  lines  and  I  found  that, 
while  the  proportions  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines 
did  not  materially  change,  my  results  were  less 
definite.  In  the  second  place,  commastopt  lines  are 
neutral  in  the  sense  of  not  being  emphatically  either 
run-on  or  endstopt,  and  I  feel  pretty  sure  that  the 
proportion  of  such  neutral  lines  counts  distinctly  in 
the  general  effect  of  the  verse.  (See  p.  21.)  At 
least,  I  hope  my  division  may  make  my  figures 
serviceable  to  readers  of  various  opinions.  Those 
who  think  that  any  punctuation  at  the  end  of  the 
line  means  an  endstopt  line,  have  only  to  add  my 
percentages  of  endstopt  and  commastopt  lines. 
Those  who  think  that  even  a  comma  does  not  neces- 
sarily keep  a  line  from  being  run-on,  will  find  in 
my  figures  for  commastopt  lines  some  basis  for  spec- 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

ulation  as  to  the  proportion  in  which  such  Hnes  may 
be  found. 

In  the  case  of  run-on  lines,  it  seems  to  me  that 
my  percentages  are  perfectly  definite.  To  the  objec- 
tion that  some  lines  which  have  no  punctuation  at 
the  end  are  nevertheless  not  run-on,  it  may  be 
pointed  out  that  two  or  three  factors  may  combine 
to  give  us  gradations  which  we  must  all  recognize, 
though  it  does  not  seem  to  me  feasible  to  tabulate 
either  their  frequency  or  their  proportions.  For 
example,  the  end  of  a  line  may,  without  punctuation, 
coincide  with  the  end  of  a  syntactical  phrase,  which 
would  make  the  reader  pause  appreciably  longer 
than  if  the  line  ended  in  the  midst  of  a  syntactical 
group. 

and  by  success  untaught 

His  proud  imaginations  thus  displaid  (P.  L.  2.  9-10) 

is  an  example  of  the  first,  and 

High  on  a  throne  of  royal  state,  which  far 
Outshone  the  wealth  of  Ormus  and  of  Ind  (P.  L.  2. 1-2) 

of  the  second.    There  is  a  similar  difference  between 
instances  like 


-yet  our  great  enemie 


All  incorruptible  (P.  L.  2. 137-8) 

and 

or  when  we  lay 

Chain'd  on  the  burning  lake  (P.  L.  2. 168-9) 

where  the  initial  stressed  syllable  of  the  next  line 
forces  a  pause.  The  most  hurried  type  of  run-on 
line,  frequent  in  Shakspere's  later  plays,  is  rare  in 
non-dramatic  blank  verse — at  least  it  is  so  infre- 
quent and  unobtrusive  that  I  have  no  instances 
in  mind.    I  mean  the  light  or  weak  ending,  as  in 

It  should  the  good  ship  so  have  swallow'd  and 

The  fraughting  souls  within  her      (Temp.  i.  2.  12-13) 

or 

10 


LINES 

Thy  father  was  the  Duke  of  Milan  and 

A  prince  of  power.  (Temp.  i.  2.  54-5) 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  sense  of  line-rhythm 
was  more  constant  or  stronger  in  Milton  than  in 
Wordsworth  or  Browning  or  Tennyson,  and  that 
therefore  my  figures  for  Milton  would  not  mean 
quite  the  same  as  for  the  other  men.  But  assuming 
that  line-rhythm  is  stronger  in  Milton  than  in  the 
others — as  I  think  it  is — the  absence  of  punctuation 
at  the  end  of  the  line  serves  the  same  function  in 
both  groups,  although  with  the  same  difference  of 
effect  that  there  is  between  Milton's  stately,  sonorous 
manner  and  the  easier,  more  colloquial  vocabulary 
of  the  Prelude  or  the  Excursion.  Indeed,  I  find  no 
obviously  and  primarily  metrical  differences;  the 
same  thing  is  evident  if  you  compare  Milton's  para- 
graph about  the  Verse,  prefixed  to  Paradise  Lost, 
with  Wordsworth's  Preface  to  the  second  edition 
of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads."  Diction,  in  short,  makes 
itself  felt  in  the  movement  of  either  prose  or  verse, 
and  in  verse  of  whatever  sort.  Therefore,  I  am  in- 
clined to  maintain  that  counting  as  run-on  only 
lines  (and  all  lines)  which  have  no  punctuation  at 
the  end,  gives  a  definite  and  unquestionable  set  of 
facts. 

In  the  case  of  endstopt  lines,  my  percentages  are 
not  quite  so  satisfactory.  Periods,  colons,  semi- 
colons, and,  ordinarily,  question  marks,  are  clear 
indications  of  a  marked  pause  in  the  sense  or  the 
syntax;  but  exclamation  points,  and  parentheses, 
and  dashes  are  less  certain.  (Where  there  is  a 
double  mark  like  , —  or  ),  or  ! — ,  I  have  felt  safe 
in  counting  a  full  pause.)  My  practice  has  been 
to  count  these  various  marks  always  as  full  stops, 
so  that  I  have,  if  anything,  somewhat  exaggerated 
the  proportions  of  endstopt  lines.  However,  various 
attempts  to  determine  the  proportions  of  these  am- 

II 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

biguous  marks  have  led  me  to  conclude  that  their 
total  number  is  not  great  enough  to  make  signifi- 
cant changes  in  the  results. 

Unbroken  lines  are  lines  with  no  punctuation 
within  the  line,  though  I  do  not  try  to  discriminate 
between  the  four  varieties  illustrated  in  these  lines 
from  the  fourth  book  of  the  Prelude: 


-and  at  once 


1  Some  lovely  Image  in  the  song  rose  up 
Full-formed,  like  Venus  rising  from  the  sea; 

2  Then  have  I  darted  forwards  to  let  loose 

3  My  hand  upon  his  back  with  stormy  joy, 

4  Caressing  him  again  and  yet  again."  (11.  1 12-17) 

I  have  made  various  attempts  to  find  out  whether 
the  proportions  of  the  varieties  just  illustrated  bore 
any  significant  relation  to  each  other,  or  to  the  in- 
dividual poet's  use  of  them,  or  to  the  proportions 
of  other  metrical  details,  but  without  tangible  re- 
sults. At  first  thought,  unbroken  lines  would  seem 
likely  to  vary  in  inverse  ratio  to  run-on  lines,  be^ 
cause  a  large  proportion  of  lines  without  internal 
pause  would  force  the  pauses  to  the  end  of  the  line, 
and  vice  versa.  The  case  of  Gascoigne,  who  has 
only  17.64%  of  his  lines  run-on,  and  70.56%  un- 
broken, seems  entirely  in  point,  but  his  case,  as  we 
shall  see,  like  Surrey's,  is  exceptional.  Again,  New- 
comb  and  Philips,  who  have  most  run-on,  have  few- 
est unbroken  lines;  but  Akenside  and  Swinburne, 
who  have  over  50%  of  their  lines  run-on,  have  also 
over  40%  unbroken.  Except  in  men  who  go  to 
extremes  in  the  use  or  avoidance  of  run-on  lines, 
unbroken  lines  have  no  essential  relation  to  run-on 
lines,  but  are  indications,  according  as  they  are  many 
or  few,  of  the  extent  to  which  the  poet  emphasizes 
or  disguises  line-rhythm.  The  proportion  of  un- 
broken lines  is  important,  too,  in  connection  with 
caesuras,  as  indicating  rapidity  of  movement. 

12 


LINES 

It  may  be  urged  that  all  these  matters,  so  far,  are 
mere  records  of  variations  in  sentence-length.  In 
one  sense  that  is  true,  for  in  blank  verse  sentence- 
structure  practically  determines  the  flow  of  the 
verse.  In  the  heroic  couplet,  on  the  contrary  —  to 
take  for  illustration  another  five-beat  iambic  verse- 
form  —  rhetoric  rarely  dominates  the  verse,  but  the 
verse  usually  compels  a  limited  type  of  sentence- 
structure  or,  perhaps,  attracts  chiefly  men  of  certain 
markedly  similar  habits  of  thought  and  expression. 
The  exceptions  to  this  are  cases  like  that  of  Keats, 
and,  so  far  as  I  know,  always  of  men  who  treat  the 
couplet  as  if  it  were  blank  verse,  and  reduce  the 
rhyme  to  an  almost  purely  decorative  function. 
These  men,  it  may  be  noted,  come  always  in  periods 
of  extravagance  or  revolt,  and  are  therefore  not 
representative  users  of  couplets.  In  a  discussion  of 
the  couplet,  then,  we  should  often  be  pointing  out 
the  ways  in  which  the  poets  adapted  themselves 
to  the  demands  of  the  couplet ;  in  our  discussion  of 
blank  verse,  we  shall  be  chiefly  engaged  in  show- 
ing how  various  poets  have  availed  themselves  of 
the  opportunities  of  the  form.  In  taking  account  of 
these  things,  then,  it  is  necessary — and  this  is  a 
point  often  neglected  or  blurred — that  we  should 
discriminate  between  what  is  rhetorical  and  what  is 
really  metrical,  but  we  shall  find  that  varying  habits 
of  sentence-structure  affect  or  exhibit  metrical  pe- 
culiarities. 

It  may  be  urged,  too,  that  this  method  merely 
records  vagaries  of  punctuation,  that  poets  and 
printers  alike  had  notions  both  eccentric  and  incon- 
sistent. True,  both  poets  and  printers  are  eccentric, 
and  what  is  worse,  inconsistent,  but  these  very 
things  more  or  less  clearly  record  significant  details 
in  which  past  generations  did  not  have  our  precise 
point  of  view.     An  illustration  or  two  will  help. 

13 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

When  Ben  Jonson  declared  that  he  ''loved  Shak- 
speare  (this  side  Idolatory)  as  much  as  any  man," 
he  capitalised  a  common  noun  and  used  parentheses 
where  we  should  be  content  with  commas,  and 
should  print  (as  some  of  his  editors  have)  ''loved 
Shakespeare,  this  side  idolatry,  as  much  as  any 
man."  We  have  not  changed  the  sense,  but  I  feel 
sure  that  we  ha,ve  changed  the  emphasis,  and  that 
Jonson's  capital  and  parenthesis,  however  custom- 
ary and  conventional  they  may  have  been,  repre- 
sented to  him  a  somewhat  stronger  sense  of  the 
inter jectional  quality  of  the  modifying  phrase,  and  a 
somewhat  more  emphatic  conception  of  the  heresy 
he  disclaimed  in  "Idolatory,"  than  the  modern  read- 
ing gives.  It  is  true  that  the  i8th  century  men 
punctuated  far  more  elaborately  than  we  do,  but  that 
I  am  sure  was  something  more  than  a  mere  conven- 
tion; it  indicated  a  habit  of  mind,  a  habit,  if  you 
will,  of  attention  to  the  details  of  a  matter  rather 
than  to  the  larger  groupings.  In  the  Night 
Thoughts,  for  instance,  one  of  the  most  profusely 
punctuated  of  the  poems,  the  punctuation  is  no  mere 
excess  of  pointing ;  it  is  an  index  of  Young's  habits 
of  expression.  In  short,  I  am  convinced  that  punc- 
tuation is  not  merely  a  matter  of  printing,  but  that 
it  is  indicative  of  a  mental  habit,  and  in  the  long 
run  measures  fairly  well  a  poet's  sensitiveness  to 
long  or  short  groups — to  details  as  details,  or  to  de- 
tails as  parts  of  a  whole.    When  Milton  wrote 

"Rocks,   Caves,  Lakes,   Fens,   Bogs,   Dens,  and  shades  of 
death,"  (Par.  Lost,  2.  621) 

it  may  be  that  his  punctuation  was  formal  merely, 
and  not  intended  to  force  a  slow  reading  of  the 
line  and  prevent  the  hasty  pairing  that  the  rhythm 
would  suggest.    But  when  he  wrote 

" and  chase 

Anguish  and  doubt  and  fear  and  sorrow  and  pain 
From  mortal  or  immortal  minds"       (Par.  Lost,  i.  557-9) 

14 


LINES 

it  looks  as  if  the  omission  of  the  punctuation  were 
deliberate ;  at  least  the  omission  admits  of  a  swifter 
reading  than  otherwise.^ 

The  very  fact  that  blank  verse  and  heroic  couplets 
of  the  same  period,  when  subjected  to  the  same  sort 
of  examination,  exhibit  marked  and  fundamental 
differences  of  treatment,  goes  to  show  that  the  punc- 
tuation of  a  given  generation  is  on  the  whole  sig- 
nificant, and  that  freaks  due  to  careless  printers  are 
rarely  if  ever  numerous  enough  to  vitiate  the 
general  results. 

A  feminine  ending  (called  also  double,  or  re- 
dundant) is  an  extra  unstressed  syllable  at  the  end 
of  the  line  after  the  fifth  metrical  beat.  The  chances 
for  difference  of  opinion  are  relatively  few.  Such 
words  as  'heaven,'  'given,'  'striven,'  I  have  counted 
as  monosyllables  at  the  end  of  the  line  inasmuch  as 
they  are  usually  so  in  the  middle,  as  are  also  all 
words  in  -ire  and  -ower.  'Being'  I  have  counted 
always  a  monosyllable ;  'spirit'  always  a  dissyllable.^ 
The  most  puzzling  cases  are  adjectives  in  -able.  In  [^ 
spite  of  Mr.  Bridges'  comments,  I  have  not  counted 

^  On  the  question  of  the  blind  poet's  supervision  of 
details  of  printing,  see  Canon  Beeching's  Preface  to 
the  Oxford  edition  of  Milton. 

2  In  books  I  and  II  of  Paradise  Lost,  'Heaven'  oc- 
curs over  i8o  times,  and  in  only  some  half  dozen  cases 
must  it  have  two  syllables,  as  in  2.  772 :  "Driv'n  headlong 
from  the  pitch  of  Heaven,  down."  In  some  fifty  cases 
it  seems  intended  for  one  syllable,  and  in  the  rest  may 
have  one  or  two  according  to  how  you  read  the  line. 

'Being'  ends  a  line  14  times  in  Paradise  Lost,  and 
once  in  Paradise  Regained;  in  the  body  of  the  line 
it  occurs  six  times  in  Paradise  Lost  and  once  in 
Paradise  Regained,  but  in  only  one  instance  must  it 
have  two  syllables:  "My  being  gav'st  me;  whom  should 
I  obey."  P.  L.  2,  865.  (In  Young,  'being'  ends  a  line 
only  four  times.) 

'Spirit'  ends  a  line  in  only  five  instances  (all  in 
Paradise    Lost).      It    must    have    two    syllables    only    24 

15 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

them  feminine,  because  they  are  only  possible  cases, 
and  are  relatively  few  in  number — Mr.  Bridges 
gives  only  five  instances  in  Milton. 

Unstressed  endings  are  such  words  as  'Provi- 
dence/ 'enterprise/  or  'supremacy/  which  by  end- 
ing the  line  with  a  logically  unstressed  syllable, 
soften  the  line-emphasis.  Many  trisyllables  like 
'inexpert,'  'understand,'  or  'comprehend,'  are  obvi- 
ously not  unstressed;  many  others,  especially  when 
found  in  a  set  of  lines  clearly  ending  with  emphatic 
syllables,  are  troublesomely  doubtful.  As  I  have 
tried  to  count  only  words  which  seemed  indubitably 
unstressed,  my  figures  should  represent  minimum 
percentages.  (Words  like  'sanctuary,'  which  at  the 
ends  of  lines  are  both  unstressed  and  feminine 
endings,  are  sometimes  found,  but  are  not  used 
often  enough  to  be  significant.     See  p.  31.) 

In  Table  I,  the  names  in  each  column  are  arranged 
in  a  descending  scale  of  percentages,  and  similar  per- 
centages are  put  side  by  side  in  the  four  columns. 
This  arrangement  shows  at  a  glance  the  extent  to 
which  the  poets  vary  or  agree,  as  well  as  whether  a 
particular  poet  is  moderate  or  extreme  in  his  use  or 
avoidance  of  any  device;  it  also  makes  obvious  some 
comparisons  in  the  use  of  the  various  devices.  In 
Milton's  case,  for  the  sake  of  more  accurate  compari- 
son, I  have  given  in  each  column  not  only  his  average, 
but  also  the  figures  for  Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Re- 
gained. 

In  Table  II,  the  correspondences  between  the  per- 
centages of  the  different  columns  have  made  it  possible 
to  arrange  the  poets  in  three  groups:  in  the  first,  all 

times  in  Paradise  Lost  and  three  times  in  Paradise 
Regained;  e.g.:  "From  thence  a  Rib,  with  cordial  spirits 
warm."  P.  L.  8. 466.  Or:  "One  day  forth  walk'd  alone, 
the  spirit  leading."  P.  R.  i.  189.  In  64  instances  in  Para- 
dise Lost  and  11  in  Paradise  Regained,  'spirit'  may 
have  one  or  two  syllables,  for  it  is  always  followed  by 
an  unstressed  syllable;  e.g.:  "Can  perish;  for  the  mind 
and  spirit  remains."  P.  L.  i.  139.  Or:  "To  which  my 
Spirit  aspir'd,  victorious  deeds."    P.  R.  i.  215. 

16 


LINES 

of  the  poets  have  under  20%  of  their  lines  run-on;  in 
the  second,  between  20  and  30%;  and  in  the  third, 
above  30%.  In  each  group  the  order  of  names  is  chron- 
ological. The  figures  for  each  poem  under  Chaucer, 
Dryden,  and  Pope  show  how  little  the  figures  were 
aflFected  by  different  kinds  of  writing.  For  Chamber- 
layne  and  Keats,  however,  average  figures  would  con- 
ceal metrical  differences  between  poems.  The  average 
for  the  total  number  of  lines  I  have  added  to  show 
how  misleading  the  use  of  such  figures  might  be. 


17 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 


TABLE 


RUNON  1 

Newcomb,     70.18 


Philips, 


Endstopt 


61.25 

58.16  Young, 


Par.  Lost, 
Shelley, 

Akenside,      56.27 
Milton,  Ave. ,54.41 
Swinburne,     53.14  Surrey, 
Somervile,     5196 

Wordsworth,48.94 
Cowper,  48.55 
Watts,  47.30 

Shenstone,  45.02 
Par.  Reg'd,    44-78 


Glover, 

Tennyson, 

Mallet, 

Landor, 

Keats, 

Browning, 


Thomson, 


Arnold, 
Blair, 


Surrey, 

Gascoigne, 
Young, 


36.60  Blair, 

35.91  Arnold, 

35^2 

35-42 

34-00 

33.34  ^      ^ 
Landor, 
Keats, 
Browning, 

30.00 

Thomson, 
28.00  Gascoigne, 
25.30  Tennyson, 
Shenstone, 
Cowper, 
Par.  Reg'd, 
Somervile, 
20.18  Mallet, 


CoMMASTOPT  Unbroken 

Gascoigne,     70.56 


S8.15 


52.41 


Gascoigne,     54.21 


Surrey, 


Glover, 
Mallet, 

Thomson, 


47.40  Landor, 
43,69  Keats, 

Tennyson, 
41.28  Akenside. 

Swinburne, 


51.26 

44.10 
43-40 
42.94 
41.47 
40.64 


Blair, 

Tennyson, 
36.76  Arnold, 
35.07  Browning, 

Watts, 

Swinburne, 

Keats, 

Par.  Reg'd, 
32.60  Wordsworth, 32.06  Thomson, 
32  00  Landor,  31.98 

31.85  .Akenside,      30.98 

Shenstone,     30.59 


39.94  Shelley,  39-58 
38.67  Par.  Reg'd,  39.32 
36.93  Wordsworth, 37.22 
34.QI  Cowper,  37.01 
34.84  Browning,  36.05 
34.20  Blair,  35.99 

34.00  Glover  35- ^9 

32.37  Milton,  Ave. ,32.88 
32.67 


28.73  Shelley, 
28.15  Surrey, 
25.42  Somervile, 
24.39  Cowper, 
24.32  Milton, Ave 
22.85  Young, 
20.70  Philips, 
20.69  Par.  Lost, 


Wordsworth,  19.00 

Milton,  Ave. ,18. 89 
17.64  Watts, 

Par.  Lost, 
15.50  Glover, 

Philips, 

Shelley, 

Akenside, 

Swinburne 

Newcomb, 


17.86  Newcomb, 

l6.Qr 

moo 

13.04 

12.91 

12.75 

12.66 

11.99 


29.04  Arnold, 
27.41  Young, 

27.34  Par.  Lost, 
27.13  Watts, 

,  26.70 

26.35  Mallet, 
25.71  Shenstone, 
24.73  Somervile, 


17.83  Philips, 
Newcomb, 


29-38 

2Q.20 
28^ 

21.31 
21.29 

20.05 


17.41 
17.39 


1  For    details  as  to 
name,  pp.  91  f. 


dates,    poems,    etc.,    see  under    each    poet's 


18 


LINES 


TABLE   II 

SOME  FIGURES  FOR  THE  HEROIC  COUPLET 

Ll.    Run.  End.  Com.  Unb. 

Chaucer,         Canterbury  Tales,  entire..  ..13680  13.22  43.95  42.83 

Prologue,  858 10.95  =;o.35  39- 7o  64.^0 

Knight's  Tale,  2250 13.90  39-8i  40-29  58.8o 

Marlowe,         Hero  &  Leander,  I  and  11. . .     722  16.06  45-o6  35.88  55.12 
Browne, Wm. Brit's  Pasts.,  1,  Songs  I  and 

IV 1590  18.67  42.89  38-44  57-04 

Cowley,           Davideis,  Book  1 901  16.53  54- 7o  28.77  56-38 

Oldham,         Satires  upon  the  Jesuits 1702  8.46  17.55  73-97  40-i8 

Waller,           9  Poems, (all over  100 lines)..  1622  15.77  47.72  36.51  50.55 

Dryden,          Pal.&Arcite;  Abs.&Achit.,..  3458  10.72  51.79  37.49  53-o7 

Abs.  &  Achit,  1031 8.43  56-74  34-83  58.97 

Pal.  &  Arcite.,  2427 11.70  49-^9  38-6i  5i-7o 

Pope,              4  Poems 3258  8.04  53.86  38.10  48-06 

Ess.  on  Crit.,  739 7-57  53-3i  39-i2  57-90 

Windsor  Forest,  434 8.52  45.85  45-63  56.91 

Iliad,  I,  78I 10.37  52.49  37-14  51-85 

Essay  on  Man,  1304 6.74  56.89  36.37  37.27 

Young, Universal  Passion 2497  6.60  63.03  30.35  43.08 

9  Poets,           21  Poems ...29430  12.12  46.19  41-69 

18858  lines  51-44 

Chapman,      Hero  &  Leander,  111  &  IV. ..    769  26.40  35-5o  3810  53i8 

Wither,          Elegiacal  Epist.  to  Fidelia. ..  1250  22.72  38.48  3880  60.96 

Cleveland,     5  Poems, (all  over  100  lines). ..    674  29.82  47.61  22.57  58.60 

Randolph,     4  Poems,(all  over  100  lines). . .     696  27.14  43.53  29.33  50.86 

Sandys            Paraphr.  on  Job,  l-XVI,...ca  1020  20.29  46.07  33.64  50.00 

Marmion  ,      LegendofCupidandPsyche      2270  26.56  33.26  40.18  47.57 

Godolphin.     Passion  of  Dido  for  Aeneas..     454  27.53  3^-54  33  93  50.22 

Wordsworth,  Et.  Vlk,  Descr.  Sk's.  Ep.  to  Bean....  1280  27.65  40-85  31- ?o  59-6o 

8  Poets,           17  Poems 8413  25,73  39-23  35  04  57-30 

Bosworth,       Arcadius  and  Sepha  2511  37-19  27.77  35-54  43-21 

Chalkhill,       Thealma  and  Clearchus 3150  42.60  23.90  33.41  33.17 

Chamberlayne,      Pharonnida,  1  &  V =^363  69.18  9.63  21.19  29.07 

England's  Jubilee 298  54.70  23.14  22.16  45.30 

Keats,             Endvmion 3905  47-ii  28.04  24.85  34.57 

Lamia 708  32.47  31.36  36.17  38.13 

Shelley.          Epipsychidion 604  39.90  28.31  31.79  44-86 

Browning,       Sordello,  I,  II,  III 3036  59-68  16.04  24.28  28.52 

6  Poets            8  Poems 19575  52-o8  20.42  27.50  33-62 

23Poets         46  Poems 574^8  27.74  36-56  35-70 

46846  lines  45.04 


19 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

The  tables  of  run-on,  endstopt,  commastopt,  and 
unbroken  lines  show  that  the  percentages  of  run-on 
lines  tend  toward  the  top  of  the  column,  of  end- 
stopt lines  toward  the  foot,  and  of  both  commastopt 
and  unbroken  lines  away  from  either  extreme.  It 
will  be  noticed,  however,  that  only  three  percentages 
go  above  60.  It  was  to  be  expected  that  most  of 
these  poets  should  have  many  run-on  and  few  end- 
stopt lines,  but  it  may  seem  surprising  that  so  few 
have  more  run-on  or  fewer  endstopt  than  Milton. 
The  only  two  who  exceeded  Paradise  Lost  were 
among  the  earliest  of  Milton's  acknowledged  imita- 
tors, and  of  those  two,  Newcomb  is  all  but  unknown, 
and  Philips  is  usually  quoted  as  a  mere  burlesquer 
of  an  outworn  fashion.  Were  these  two  men  imi- 
tating Milton  in  a  mere  superficial  device  of  tech- 
nique, or  were  they  trying  a  device  which  only  a 
supreme  artist  could  use  successfully?  Even  Swin- 
burne and  Shelley — those  past  masters  in  effects  of 
rapidity — fall  slightly  below  Paradise  Lost.  Tenny- 
son, Keats,  and  Browning,  whose  blank  verse  is 
highly  praised,  fall  far  below  Milton  in  their  use 
of  run-on  lines.  In  Milton's  group  are  nine  men 
with,  in  round  numbers,  between  45  and  55%  of 
run-on  lines ;  but  there  are  also  nine  men  in  a  group 
ranging  from  25  to  35%.  Apparently  then,  the  pro- 
portion of  run-on  lines  is  a  less  certain  measure  of 
the  movement  of  blank  verse  than  we  have  been  in 
the  habit  of  thinking;  it  may  be  a  measure  of  ease 
and  flexibility,  but  even  then,  the  proportion  neces- 
sary is  less  than  one  might  think.  That  run-on  lines 
are  not  essential  to  give  ease  and  fluidity  to  five-beat 
iambic  verse  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  in  the  Canter- 
bury Tales  the  percentage  of  run-on  lines  is  only 
13.22. 

That  Swinburne  and  Shelley  should  use  fewer 
endstopt  lines  than  Miiton  did  in  Paradise  Lost  is 

20 


LINES 

not  surprising,  but  it  is  surely  significant  either  of 
a  change  of  theory  or  a  practical  difficulty  in  com- 
position, or  of  both  of  these  things,  that  besides 
these  two  only  Newcomb,  Akenside,  Philips,  Glover, 
and  Watts  should  be  in  this  group.  Wordsworth, 
to  be  sure,  is  near  Milton,  but  Tennyson,  Browning, 
and  Keats  use  many  more  endstopt  lines.  Brown- 
ing never  approaches  the  percentages  of  Paradise 
Lost,  and  Tennyson  does  so  only  in  Timbuctoo.  It 
should  be  observed  that  except  at  the  extreme  ends, 
the  proportions  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines  bear 
no  clear  relation  to  each  other,  and  that  only  eight 
of  the  twenty-three  men  can  be  called  extremists 
in  both  respects. 

The  table  of  commastopt  lines  is  in  general  a 
corollary  of  the  tables  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines, 
but  it  will  be  observed  that  the  poets  are  practically 
all  massed  between  25  and  40%.  That  is  to  say, 
from  one-fourth  to  more  than  one-third  of  the  lines 
are  neutral  in  character  (according  to  the  reader's 
point  of  view,  either  mildly  endstopt,  or  not  mark- 
edly run-on).  Newcomb  and  Young  have  fewest, 
Young  because  of  excess  of  endstopt,  Newcomb  of 
run-on  lines.  Gascoigne  also  has  many  because  he 
has  so  few  run-on.  In  both  Newcomb  and  Gas- 
coigne the  commastopt  lines  have  to  me  usually  the 
force  of  endstopt  lines, — in  Newcomb  because  of  his 
excess  of  run-on  lines,  in  Gascoigne  because  of  an 
equal  excess  of  unbroken  lines.  Only  Keats,  Lan- 
dor,  and  Browning  have  an  almost  equal  balance  of 
run-on,  endstopt,  and  commastopt  lines;  in  Arnold, 
the  proportions  vary  a  little  more;  but  Milton  is 
extreme  in  all  three  respects.  Keats,  Browning,  and 
Tennyson,  who  have  rather  more  run-on  than  end- 
stopt lines,  have  a  relatively  large  per  cent  of  comma- 
stopt. Inasmuch  as  these  lines  are  neutral — not 
pronounced  in  either  directioo — this  fact,  along  with 

21 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

their  fondness  for  unbroken  lines  (see  p.  24)  may- 
indicate  that  these  19th  century  poets  had  a  some- 
what subtler  ear  for  the  delicacies  of  line-rhythm 
than  the  others. 

The  fact  that  only  Gascoigne  and  Surrey,  the 
earliest  and  least  expert  of  our  poets,  have  more 
than  half  their  lines  unbroken,  seems  at  first  glance 
to  bear  out  the  impression  that  the  pause  within 
the  line  is  an  important  feature  of  good  blank 
verse.  A  scrutiny  of  the  list  shows,  however,  that 
mere  quantity  of  internal  pauses  is  not  important, 
for  Newcomb,  Philips,  Somervile,  Shenstone,  Mallet, 
and  Watts  have  fewest  unbroken  lines,  and  conse- 
quently most  lines  with  internal  pause.  On  the 
other  hand,  all  of  the  19th  century  poets  except 
Arnold  have  from  36  to  44%  of  unbroken  lines  and 
Milton  has  10%  more  in  Paradise  Regained  than 
he  has  in  Paradise  Lost. 

A  comparison  of  blank  verse  with  the  heroic 
couplet  will  serve  to  mark  a  few  sharp  differences 
in  practice,  and  should  help  to  explain  one  or  two 
things  about  blank  verse.  The  23  writers  of  couplets 
represented  in  the  table  fall  into  three  groups ;  those 
who  use  under  20%  of  run-on  lines,  those  who  use 
between  20  and  30%,  and  those  who  use  over  30%. 
In  the  first  group.  Pope,  as  might  be  expected,  has 
very  few  run-on  lines,  but  the  differences  in  effect 
between  the  couplets  of  Pope,  Dryden,  and  Chaucer, 
are  obviously  not  to  be  explained  by  these  details  of 
versification.  Except  for  Oldham,  the  men  in  this 
first  group  have  over  40%  of  their  lines  endstopt; 
indeed,  aside  from  Oldham,  the  only  poets  in  the 
table  who  have  under  30%  of  endstopt  lines  are  the 
six  in  the  last  group.  In  the  matter  of  run-on  and 
endstopt  lines,  then,  the  practice  of  the  couplet  is 
exactly  the  reverse  of  that  of  blank  verse. 

Only  seven  writers  of  blank  verse  have  more  than 

22 


LINES 

40%  of  their  lines  unbroken ;  only  Chalkhill,  Cham- 
berlayne,  Keats,  and  Browning  have  so  small  a  pro- 
portion of  their  couplet  lines  unbroken,  so  that  in 
this  respect,  too,  the  couplet  and  blank  verse  have 
exactly  opposite  tendencies.  As  compared  with  the 
heroic  couplet,  unbroken  lines  in  blank  verse  are 
fewer,  partly  because  their  function  is  served  by  run- 
on  lines,  for  roughly  speaking,  a  decrease  in  the 
pauses  at  the  end  of  the  line  brings  an  increase 
within  the  Hne;  partly  also,  as  is  shown  especially 
by  those  users  of  the  couplet  who  go  to  excess  in 
run-on  lines,  because  the  rhyme,  even  when  it  serves 
rather  as  a  decoration  than  as  an  aid  to  rhetorical 
emphasis,  marks  the  line-rhythm  strongly.  When 
rhyme  is  discarded,  the  line-rhythm  is  more  or  less 
subordinated  to  the  sense-rhythms  which  overlay 
it.  The  influence  of  the  rhyme  shows  clearly  both 
in  the  higher  proportions  of  unbroken  lines  in  the 
couplet,  and  in  the  much  more  constant  relations 
between  run-on  and  endstopt  lines  than  in  blank 
verse. 

When  we  find  blank  verse  like  Surrey's,  in  which 
the  proportions  of  run-on,  endstopt,  and  unbroken 
lines  are  not  far  from  those  of  Waller's  couplets, 
we  can  say  at  once  that  these  details  are  the  marks 
of  the  pioneer  who  has  not  learned  flexibility.^  In 
the  blank  verse  of  Newcomb  and  Milton  we  find, 
as  we  expect,  many  run-on  and  few  unbroken  lines. 
But  Shelley,  Akenside,  and  Swinburne,  who  have 
as  many  run-on  lines  as  Milton's  average,  and  fewer 
endstopt  lines  than  Paradise  Lost,  have  distinctly 

1  Gascoigne,  it  will  be  remembered,  says  in  the  13th 
Par.  of  his  "Notes  of  Instruction,"  that  "There  are 
also  certayn  pauses  or  restes  in  a  verse,  which  may  be 
called  Ceasures,  whereof  I  would  be  lothe  to  stande  long, 
since  it  is  at  the  discretion  of  the  writer.  .  ,  ."  His 
70%  of  lines  without  internal  punctuation  may  indicate, 
therefore,  that  he  used  his  'discretion.' 

23 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

more  unbroken  lines  than  Milton ;  and  Young,  whose 
blank  verse  has  couplet  proportions  of  run-on  and 
endstopt,  has  as  few  unbroken  lines  as  Paradise  Lost. 
Perhaps  we  may  charge  a  part  of  these  differences 
to  varying  habits  of  punctuation,  but  certainly  not 
a  significant  proportion,  for  the  i8th  century  men 
show  the  greatest  diversity  in  their  use  of  both 
run-on  and  unbroken  lines.  The  conventional  com- 
ment on  Young — that  he  merely  reflected  the  coup- 
let habit  of  his  day — is  discredited  by  his  small  use 
of  unbroken  lines  in  his  blank  verse  as  compared 
with  his  couplets ;  in  his  case,  we  can  fall  back  upon 
his  rhetoric,  his  habit  of  pithy  expression. 

It  should  be  fairly  clear,  it  seems  to  me,  that 
the  proportion  of  unbroken  lines  in  blank  verse  is 
not,  as  in  the  case  of  commastopt  lines,  so  much  a 
corollary  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines  as  it  is  a 
measure  or  indication  of  sensitiveness  to  line-rhythm. 
Consequently,  a  relatively  high  percentage  of  un- 
broken lines  in  a  poet  like  Landor,  or  in  the  19th 
century  men,  who  have  a  third  or  more  of  their 
lines  run-on,  indicates  more  sensitiveness  to,  or 
perhaps,  emphasis  upon  line-rhythm  than  the  earlier 
men  showed.  I  find  some  support  for  this  conjec- 
ture in  the  fact  that  Keats  has  more  run-on  and 
fewer  unbroken  lines  in  the  couplets  of  Endymion 
than  in  the  blank  verse  of  Hyperion;  and  that  in 
Lamia,  which  has  almost  as  many  run-on  lines  as 
Hyperion,  he  has  distinctly  fewer  unbroken  lines. 
Browning,  also,  with  nearly  twice  as  many  run-on 
lines  in  his  couplets  as  in  his  blank  verse,  has  nearly 
10%  fewer  unbroken  lines  in  his  couplets.  These 
two  poets  seem  to  have  felt  in  their  blank  verse  the 
need  of  some  compensation  for  the  rhyme  of  their 
couplets,  even  though  in  the  couplets  they  went  to 
great  lengths  to  subordinate  the  rhyme.  In  the  cases 
of  Shelley  and  Wordsworth,  however,  a  comparison 

24 


NOTE  ON  PARAGRAPHS 

of  their  blank  verse  with  their  couplets  indicates  that 
they  found  that  run-on  lines  in  blank  verse  took  the 
place  of  unbroken  lines  in  their  couplets,  although 
the  differences  are  perhaps  not  great  enough  to  be 
significant. 

Note  on  Paragraphs. 

One  minor  feature  of  non-dramatic  blank  verse, 
partly  conventional,  partly  an  indication  of  the  ex- 
tent to  which  the  various  poets  have  observed  or 
tried  to  conceal  the  line-unit,  is  the  practice  of  be- 
ginning a  paragraph  in  the  middle  of  a  line.  Twelve 
of  the  poets,  in  the  poems  cited,  never  begin  a 
paragraph  within  a  line.  Surrey  and  Gascoigne  do 
not;  Milton  in  one  instance  (5a w.  ^^.,  1563)  di- 
vides a  line  among  three  speakers.  Of  the  i8th  cen- 
tury men.  Mallet  has  six  instances,  Young  four  ( i  in 
1st  Bk.,  3  in  9th)  ;  Landor  has  none  in  Gebir,  though 
in  the  series  called  Hellenics,  nearly  half  his  para- 
graphs begin  within  the  Hne.  Of  the  19th  century 
poets,  Keats,  Arnold,  and  Swinburne  have  none/ 
Shelley  begins  seven  of  the  25  paragraphs  of  Alastor 
in  the  middle  of  a  line.  In  Wordsworth's  Prelude, 
the  percentage  of  such  paragraphs  is  14.05 ;  in  the 
Excursion  it  rises  to  25.42.  Tennyson's  practice 
varies:  in  St.  Simeon  the  proportion  is  31.25,  in  the 
Lover's  Tale  and  the  Princess,  a  little  over  28;  in 
the  Idylls  9.17,  and  in  Arden  only  5.55.  Browning 
has  but  two  cases  in  the  45  paragraphs  of  Pauline, 

1  Swinburne's  avoidance  in  his  semi-lyric,  Greek 
tragedies  of  paragraphs  which  begin  within  the  line 
is  in  sharp  contrast  with  his  practice  in  Mary  Stuart. 
Of  the  444  speeches  in  that  play,  187  begin  with  the  8th 
syllable  of  the  line,  15  with  the  9th,  and  38  with  the 
last  syllable,  so  that  more  than  half  of  his  speeches 
begin  not  merely  within  the  line,  but  with  noticeable 
abruptness  and  emphasis  toward  the  extreme  end  of 
the  line. 

25 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

few  or  none  in  most  of  his  shorter  poems,  27.43% 
in  the  first  six  books  of  the  Ring  and  the  Book,  and 
many  in  Balaustion,  Prince  HohenstielSchwangau, 
the  Inn  Album,  and  Ferishtah. 

Milton's  habit  of  beginning  and  ending  his  para- 
Ixgi'aphs  always  with  a  full  line  may  have  been  one 
way  of  making  a  distinction  between  epic  and  drama- 
tic blank  verse ;  even  so,  it  is  one  of  the  items  which 
go  to  show  that  Milton  frankly  recognized  that  he 
was  writing  in  a  regularly  metrical  verse-form,  and 
avoided  practically  all  the  devices  which  might  tend 
to  conceal  its  character.  The  19th  century  men, 
on  the  contrary,  instead  of  exploiting  the  powers  of 
blank  verse  as  an  instrument,  seem  inclined  to  ex- 
periment with  a  view  to  finding  out  how  nearly 
they  can  reduce  it  to  the  role  of  a  mere  accompani- 
ment. The  differences  in  paragraph  ending  between 
the  Princess  and  the  Idylls  may  indicate  that  Tenny- 
son felt  the  difference  between  easy,  only  half- 
formal  narrative  and  the  full  flow  of  epic.  Arnold's 
avoidance  of  paragraphs  beginning  within  the  line 
is  in  keeping  with  the  other  metrical  formalisms  of 
Sohrab  and  RusUim,  and  like  Swinburne's,  prob- 
ably is  due  to  Greek  models.  It  does  not  seem  to 
me  sufficient  to  say  of  19th  century  non-dramatic 
blank  verse  merely  that  it  shows  the  influence  of 
dramatic  conventions  and  licenses,  for  while  that 
may  be  manifestly  true  of  the  greater  part  of  Brown- 
ing's work,  because  in  it  the  clearly  dramatic  cast  of 
the  poetry  would  naturally  profit  by  whatever  modi- 
fications of  blank  verse  the  drama  had  found  effec- 
tive (but  see  comments  on  Browning,  p.  121),  it 
does  not  adequately  explain  Wordsworth's  use,  or 
the  variations  in  Tennyson's  practice. 


26 


ENDINGS 

TABLE  III 

FEMININE  AND  UNSTRESSED  ENDINGS 

Fem. 

Uns. 

Akenside, 
Glover, 
Mallet, 
Shenstone, 

none 
none 
none 
none 

Akenside 

none 

Newcomb, 
Thomson, 
Philips, 

I  case? 
I  case 
I  case 

Landor, 
Arnold, 

2  cases 
2  cases 

Glover, 
Newcomb, 

2  cases? 
2  cases? 

Cowper, 
Swinburne, 

3  cases 
3  cases 

Somervile, 

Surrey, 

Gascoigne, 

0.14% 

0-54 

0-93 

Cowper, 
Mallet, 

0.39% 

0.62 

Young, 
Wordsworth, 
Par.  Lost, 

1. 10 

1-34 

Thomson, 

Arnold, 

Blair, 

1.24 

1.33 
1.95 

Keats, 
Shelley, 
Browning, 
Tennyson, 
Milton,  Ave., 

2.04 
2.08 
2.15 

2.33 

2.8l 

Watts, 

Shenstone, 

Philips, 

2.13 
2.21 
2.71 

Par.  Reg'd, 

372 

Swinburne, 
Young, 
Par.  Lost, 
Landor, 

3.06 
3-64 
3.8- 

3-92  • 

Watts, 

449 

Surrey, 
Milton,  Ave., 

4.27 
.    4.37 

Wordsworth, 
Par.  Reg'd, 
Tennyson, 

5.65 
5.88 

Keats, 

8.50 

Gascoigne, 
Browning, 
Shelley, 

9.07 

9.11 

10.27 

Blair, 


17.47 


27 


ENGLISH   BLANK  VERSE 

Next  to  run-on  lines,  feminine  endings  are  com- 
monly supposed  to  be  the  favorite  device  for  sub- 
ordinating or  softening  line-emphasis.  In  one  of 
his  latest  volumes  Professor  Saintsbury  says  of  the 
extra  syllable :  "At  the  end  it  is  often  beautiful ;  and, 
whether  beauty  or  not,  is  almost  inevitable  now 
and  then,  and  most  useful  constantly.  Further,  it  is 
a  most  powerful  and  important  instrument  of  varia- 
tion— a  natural  link  or  remedy  against  line-isola- 
tion. .  .  ."  ("Hist,  of  Eng.  Pros."  2.  54.)  Out- 
side of  dramatic  verse,  however,  feminine  endings 
are  used  only  sparingly.  The  i8th  century  poets 
had  definite  objections  to  them,  for  the  reason  which 
Dr.  Johnson  urged  in  the  88th  number  of  the 
Rambler — "since  the  narrow  limits  of  our  language 
allows  no  other  distinction  of  epic  and  dramatic 
measures."  Akenside,  Glover,  Shenstone,  and  Mal- 
let, admit  none  at  all;  Newcomb  has  one  doubtful 
case  in  over  12,000  lines  ;^  Thomson  has  one  case,^ 
and  Philips  one.^  Landor  has  two  doubtful  cases,* 
and  Cowper^  and  Arnold*'  two  each.  Swinburne 
has  three  cases;  Somervile  only  five.  Surrey  and 
Gascoigne  have  eleven  each,  and  Young  has  only  a 
small  fraction  over  one  per  cent.  Wordsworth,  with 
i-35%»  has  almost  the  same  proportion  as  Milton  in 
Paradise  Lost.  The  19th  century  men,  Keats,  Shel- 
ley, Tennyson,  and  Browning,  have  between  two 
and  two  and  one-third  per  cent,  each,  and  Milton's 
three  poems  average  2.81.  Watts,  therefore,  with 
4.49%,  and  Blair,  with  17.47,  are  extreme  as  com- 
pared with  the  others,  but  even  Blair  comes  only  to 

1 — ever,    in   8.134;    in  25   other   instances   of  — ever  at 
the  end  of  a  line,  it  is  printed  — e'er. 
2 — feature,  Autumn,  269. 
3  — prowess,  Blenheim,  96. 
*— iron,  Bk.  II,  —heron,  Bk.  VII. 
5 — Apollo,  — inextinguishable,  both  in  Iliad  I. 
* — estuaries,  — rivers. 

28 


ENDINGS 

about  the  average  of  Shakspere's  middle  period, 
and  does  not  use  more  than  half  as  many  as  Shak- 
spere  does  in  the  Winter's  Tale  or  the  Tempest.  In 
the  cases  of  practically  all  the  poets  in  our  list  who 
wrote  plays  as  well  as  non-dramatic  verse,  the  num- 
ber of  feminine  endings  in  the  plays  is  many  fold 
that  in  the  other  poems.  The  quantity  in  the  drama- 
tic verse  is  usually,  I  should  say,  so  great  as  to  have 
been  definitely  sought  for.  Those  poets  who  entirely 
avoid  feminine  endings  in  their  non-dramatic  verse 
must  have  gone  to  some  trouble.  But  does  the 
presence  of  one  or  two  per  cent  mean  avoidance,  or 
are  we  to  take  that  as  a  normal  proportion  when  the 
device  in  question  is  neither  sought  nor  avoided? 
The  details  in  Milton's  case  indicate  that  he  was  in- 
clined to  avoid  them  in  Paradise  Lost.  Browning, 
who  used  them  freely  at  first,  later  entirely  avoided 
them  (see  details  under  Browning,  p.  121).  A  nor- 
mal proportion  of  feminine  endings  would  be,  I  take 
it,  the  percentage  of  lines  in  which  the  poet  would 
find  it  easier  to  leave  the  extra  syllable  than  to  avoid 
it.  Such  a  proportion  ( for  which  there  is  doubtless 
some  mathematical  law  of  probabilities)  would  be 
always  modified  in  the  individual  poet  both  by  his 
habits  of  composition  and  by  his  theories  as  to  the 
beauty  or  advisability  of  feminine  endings.  My"  own 
conjecture  is  that  Milton  was  a  little  more  inclined 
to  avoid  them  than  the  19th  century  men  were,  who 
in  this,  as  in  some  other  matters,  went  a  little  farther 
than  Milton  in  subordinating  the  verse-form. 

The  19th  century  poets  show  this  tendency  in 
the  quality  of  their  extra  syllables  even  more  clearly 
than  they  do  in  their  number.  In  Paradise  Lost, 
Milton  uses  in  his  feminine  endings  some  80  words 
and  20  endings,  which  in  every  case  are  relatively 
light  syllables,  such  as  (to  give  those  most  frequent- 
ly used)  -ing  (more  often  than  any  three  others), 

29 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

-en,  -est,  -er,  -ed,  -il,  -it.  In  contrast  with 
Milton's  practice,  in  the  Tempest,  I.  ii,  Shakspere, 
although  he  uses  for  the  most  part  syllables  that  are 
light,  has  also  such  words  as  royalty,  deafness, 
librsiTy,  royalties,  confederates,  tribute,  midnight, 
darkness,  business,  fortunes,  dulness,  topmast,  Nep- 
tune, torment,  subject,  inland,  conscience  and  com- 
fort. Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and  Browning  as  a 
rule  use  light  syllables,  but  Wordsworth  uses  such 
words  as  moments,  judgment,  sadness,  and  timbrel; 
Tennyson  such  words  as  ^/o.y^om  evasion,  eleventh ; 
and  Browning  such  words  as  a;;ni^cment,  conjunc- 
ture, England  (cf.  Shakspere's  use  in  Rich.  II  and 
Hen.  V),  falsehood,  forward,  godsend,  household, 
loathsome,  repugnance,  sunrise,  tincture,  threshold, 
weakness,  and  zvitness.  Cases  like  these  seem  to  me 
deliberate  'licenses,'  borrowed  from  the  dramatists, 
without  the  dramatist's  justification,  and  therefore 
obtrusive  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  actual  num- 
ber, for  one  such  case  would  attract  more  attention 
from  readers  than  twenty  where  the  extra  syllable 
was  light. 

A  less  obtrusive  way  of  softening  line-rhythm 
than  the  use  of  feminine  endings  consists  in  end- 
ing the  line  with  a  word  of  three  or  more  syllables, 
with  the  normal  word  accent  on  the  antepenult — 
words  such  as  'ministers,'  'questionings,'  'alchemist.' 
This  use  of  words  is  equivalent  to  making  (or  does 
make)  the  last  foot  of  the  line  unstressed.  (See  Dr. 
Johnson's  comment,  p.  86.)  In  Milton,  4.37%  of 
the  lines  have  these  unstressed  endings;  the  i8th 
century  poets  objected  to  them  (theoretically,  at 
least)  as  much  as  to  feminine  endings,  and  Akenside, 
Glover,  and  Newcomb  avoid  them  entirely  ;^  Cowper 
and  Mallet  have  very  few ;  Thomson,  Somervile,  and 

1  Glover  and  Newcomb  have  each  two  doubtful  cases. 

30 


ENDINGS 

Blair  between  one  and  two  per  cent;  Watts,  Shen- 
stone,  and  Philips,  under  three  per  cent.  Arnold  for 
the  most  part  avoids  them,  but  the  other  19th  cen- 
tury men  use  them  more  freely  than  Milton, — Keats 
and  Shelley  in  particular/ 

Words  like  'sanctuary,  'testimony,'  'secretary,' 
which  are  both  unstressed  and  feminine,  occur  occa- 
sionally, but  so  rarely  that  they  are  obviously  acci- 
dental, and  merely  unavoided — clearly  not  sought 
for.^  In  Tennyson,  for  instance,  the  feminine  and 
unstressed  endings  together  amount  to  less  than  8% 
and  of  this  number  only  about  one-fifteenth  are  both 
feminine  and  unstressed;^  in  Wordsworth's  Pre- 
lude, the  feminine  and  unstressed  are  only  one-sev- 
enty-first of  the  total  8.75% ;  Keats  has  no  endings 
which  are  both ;  Shelley  has  only  two.* 

A  comparison  of  the  relative  proportions  of  femi- 
nine and  unstressed  endings  shows  that  Watts  and 
Blair  alone  have  a  marked  excess  of  feminine  end- 
ings, and  that  Surrey  and  Gascoigne  in  the  i6th 
century,  Young  in  the  i8th,  and  all  of  the  19th  cen- 
tury men  but  Arnold,  have  a  marked  excess  of  un- 
stressed endings. 

1  Surrey  stands  nearest  to  Milton,  and  Gascoigne  uses 
more  than  twice  as  many;  the  reason  in  their  case  is 
partly  that  secondary  stresses  had  then  hardly  become 
so  light  as  later  (compare  the  common  Elizabethan 
scansion  of  *o-ce-an,'  *promo-ti-on,'  etc.),  partly  that 
the  versification  of  these  pioneers  was  inelastic.  I  do 
not  know  why  Gascoigne  should  have  twice  as  many 
as  Surrey. 

2  The  only  possible  exception  to  this  statement  that 
I  have  come  upon  is  Swinburne;  in  Mary  Stuart,  22 
out  of  68  feminine  endings  are  words  like  'secretary.' 
Although  I  have  no  figures  for  other  plays,  I  think  that 
Mary  Stuart  is  exceptional  in  this  respect  even  in 
dramatic  verse. 

3  Only  3  cases  in  the  Lover's  Tale,  and  10  in  Arden. 

*  In  the  471  lines  of  the  Tempest,  I,  ii,  Shakspere  has 
only  3. 

31 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Theoretically,  the  proportions  in  which  feminine 
and  unstressed  endings  are  distributed  among  the 
run-on,  endstopt,  and  commastopt  lines  should  be 
important.  In  Keat's  Hyperion,  where  run-on,  end- 
stopt, and  commastopt  lines  are  about  equally  dis- 
tributed, two-thirds  of  the  feminine  endings  are 
in  endstopt  lines,  more  than  onei-fourth  in  comma- 
stopt, and  only  about  one-twentieth  in  run-on  lines. 
Unstressed  endings  are  a  trifle  fewer  in  run-on  lines 
than  elsewhere.  In  Shelley's  Alastor,  although  run- 
on  lines  are  nearly  five  times  as  numerous  as  end- 
stopt, only  a  little  over  one-third  of  the  feminine 
endings  are  in  run-on  lines — hardly  so  marked  an 
avoidance  as  Keats's,  but  still  significant.  Unstressed 
endings  are  distributed  in  about  the  same  propor- 
tions as  the  run-on,  endstopt,  and  commastopt  lines. 
In  Tennyson's  Lover  s  Tale,  one-half  the  feminine 
endings  come  in  the  two-fifths  of  the  lines  which 
are  run-on,  with  fewest  in  the  endstopt.  Unstressed 
endings,  show  a  marked  preference  for  endstopt 
lines,  and  some  avoidance  of  run-on  lines.  In  Enoch 
Arden,  three-tenths  of  the  lines  are  run-on,  and  con- 
tain not  quite  two-tenths  of  the  feminine  endings. 
Unstressed  endings  show  some  avoidance  of  end- 
stopt lines,  with  corresponding  frequency  in  comma- 
stopt lines.  In  Blair's  Grave,  the  one  poem  in  our 
list  in  which  the  feminine  endings  are  so  numerous 
as  to  be  obviously  sought  for,  the  17.47%  are  dis- 
tributed almost  exactly  as  the  run-on,  endstopt,  and 
commastopt  lines  are,  with  a  very  slight  excess  in 
endstopt  lines,  and  fewer  in  commastopt.  In  the  471 
lines  of  blank  verse  in  the  Tempest,  I.  ii,  there  are 
173  feminine  endings — 36.73%.  These  are  distrib- 
uted almost  exactly  as  the  run-on,  endstopt,  and 
commastopt  lines  are,  with  a  slight  excess  in  run-on, 
taken  from  the  endstopt. 

Of  these  five  poets,  then,  Blair  and  Shakspere, 

32 


NOTE  ON  RHYME 

who  use  feminine  endings  to  a  marked  degree, 
distribute  them  impartially ;  Tennyson  wavers  a  little, 
for  he  seems  to  have  a  slight  preference  for  feminine 
endings  in  run-on  lines  in  the  Lover's  Tale,  and  a 
slight  avoidance  of  them  in  Arden.  Shelley  pretty 
clearly,  and  Keats  very  obviously,  avoids  them  in 
run-on  lines.  One  would  expect  fewer  feminine 
endings  in  run-on  lines  than  elsewhere,  for  theo- 
retically at  least  they  would  disturb  the  s^ying  of 
the  rhythm  more  than  if  they  came  in  endstopt  lines, 
since,  in  that  case,  the  rhetorical  pause  would  give 
the  reader  a  chance  to  take  a  fresh  start  in  his 
rhythm. 

Evidence  is  lacking,  so  far  as  I  can  find,  to  show 
conscious  use  of  any  two  devices  in  combination,  or 
any  avoidance  of  such  use.  Poets  who  have  wished 
to  break  down  or  subordinate  line-rhythm  in  blank 
verse  have  usually  done  so  chiefly  by  the  use  of  only 
one  device.  Milton,  for  example,  has  some  55%  of 
run-on  lines,  but  hardly  enough  feminine  endings 
to  have  any  marked  eflfect.  Blair,  again,  who  has 
only  25%  of  run-on  lines,  has  1747%  of  feminine 
endings — less  than  half  as  many  run-on  lines  as 
Milton,  and  more  than  six  times  as  many  feminine 
endings  (or  nearly  thirteen  times  as  many  as  in 
Paradise  Lost). 

Note  on  Rhyme. 

This  "rimles  verse,"  as  Gascoigne  called  it,  offers 
opportunities  both  for  rhetorical  repetition  of  a  word 
or  phrase  and  for  occasional  rhymes.  Blair's  Grave, 
which  closes  with  a  couplet,  is  the  only  one  of  the 
poems  here  studied  which  has  the  'rhyme-tag'  fami- 
liar to  readers  of  Shakspere.  About  Milton,  Mr. 
Bridges  has  this  rather  vague  sentence :  "Rhyme  oc- 
curs in  Paradise  Lost  (see  I.  146.  8.  51 ;  II.  220.  i ; 
IV.  24-7),  but  only  as  a  natural  richness  among  the 

33 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

varieties  of  speech;  and  it  would  seem  that  it  can- 
not be  forbidden  in  a  long  poem  but  by  the  scrupu- 
losity which  betrays  art."  ('^Milton's  Prosody,"  87.) 
In  Paradise  Lost^  I  have  noted  some  seventeen  in- 
stances of  rhyme,  such  as  — destroy,  — joy,  in 
9.  477-8.  In  seventeen  other  cases,  the  same  word 
or  phrase  is  repeated,  as  in  4.  20-21 : 

"for    within    him    Hell," 
He  brings,  and  round  about  him,  nor  from  Hell," 

or  in  12.  202-3 : 

"Before  them  in  a  Cloud,  and  Pillar  of  Fire, 
By  day  a  Cloaid,  by  night  a  Pillar  of  Fire." 

These  are  surely  mere  rhetorical  repetitions,  of  a 
kind  which  one  might  expect  to  find  much  more 
often.  There  are  also  about  a  dozen  places  in  the 
poem  where  the  same  word  or  phrase  is  repeated, 
not  in  the  next  line,  but  in  the  second,  as  in  2.  787.  9 : 

"I  fled,  and  cry'd  out  Death; 
Hell  trembl'd  at  the  hideous  Name,  and  sigh'd 
From  all  her  Caves,  and  back  resounded  Death." 

In  another  dozen  instances,  Milton  repeats  a  word 
in  different  form :  e.g.  — eyes,  — eye,  in  6.  847-8 ; 
— breathed,  — breathe,  in  9.  193-4;  — invoke,  — in- 
vokt,  in  II.  586-7;  or  — deal,  — dealt,  in  12.  483-4. 

Some  of  these  cases,  both  of  rhyme  and  of  repeti- 
tion, link  sentences,  as  in  4.  26-7 : 

"Worse;    of   worse   deeds    worse    sufferings^  miist   ensue. 
Sometimes  toward  Eden  which  now  in  his  view 
Lay  pleasant." 

or  in  1 1.593-4: 

"The  bent  of  nature;  which  he  thus  expressed. 
True  opener  of  mine  eyes,  prime  Angel  blest." 

Compare  these  passages  with  two  in  Book  VII : 

1  In  the  number  and  character  of  its  rhymes  and 
repetitions.  Paradise  Regained  is  like  Paradise  Lost,  with 
no  change  or  'relaxation'  of  practice. 

34 


NOTE  ON  RHYME 

"Be  gather  d  now  ye  Waters  under  Heav'n 
Into  one  place,   and  let  dry  land  appeer. 
Immediately  the  mountains  huge  appeer 
Emergent."  (283-6) 

"By  tincture  or   reflection  they  augment 
Their   small   peculiar,   though   from  human   sight 
So   far  remote,  with  diminution  seen. 
First  in  his  East  the  glorious  Lamp  was  seen, 
Regent  of  day."  (367-71) 

In  both  of  these  last  passages,  the  repetition  seems 
pretty  clearly  accidental,  for  in  neither  case  does  it\ 
contribute  to  the  eflfectiveness  of  the  passage,  and 
it  would  not  have  been  hard  to  avoid,  since  'were 
seen'  would  serve  in  place  of  the  second  'appeer,' 
and  'appear'd'  in  place  of  'was  seen.'  One  won- 
ders if  such  instances  do  not  indicate  pauses  in  Mil- 
ton's work  of  composition;  as  if  the  repeated  word 
or  syllable  were  an  echo  of  the  passage  read  to  him 
before  he  took  up  his  task  for  the  day.^ 

1  In  opposition  to  this  view,  a  friend  observes:  "Both 
of  these  seem  to  me  to  promote  concatenation  of 
thought.  In  the  latter  case  it  almost  has  the  function 
of  'videlicet.'  The  fact  that  the  echo  could  easily  have 
been  avoided  shows  that  it  was  not  accidental  (in 
the  work  of  so  careful  a  poet).  Milton  loved  echoes — 
using  them,  I  believe,  for  the  purpose  of  superadding 
harmony  to  melody  by  the  overtones  accompanying 
the  echoes.  My  favorite  examples  of  this  are  P.  L.  2. 
559-60,  and  641-56."    The  first  passage  runs: 

and  reasoned  high 
Of  Providence,  Foreknowledge,  Will,  and  Fate, 
Fixt  Fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute. 

The  second  is  the  one  which  begins: 
Sweet  is  the  breath  of  morn,  her  rising  sweet. 

In  these  two  passages,  as  in  many  others  in  Milton, 
both  the  beauty  of  the  echo  and  the  conscious  use  of 
it  are  undeniable;  but  it  is  to  be  observed  that  even 
in  the  second  passage  ("Sweet  is  the  breath  of  morn") 
where  there  is  a  surprising  amount  of  skilful  repetition 
of  words  and  phrases,  Milton  has  only  three  instances 
of  repetition  at  the  ends  of  lines  (though  in  no  instance 

35 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

The  other  poets,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  have 
even  fewer  rhymes  than  Milton,  and  in  those  they 
have,  the  first  rhyme-syllable  is  likely  to  be  un- 
stressed, like  this,  from  the  beginning  of  Tennyson's 
Lover's  Tale: 

"Filling  with  purple  gloom  the  vacancies 
Between  the  tufted  hills,  the  sloping  seas 
Hung  in  mid-heaven," 

or  this  from  Shelley's  Alastor,  159-60: 

"And  lofty  hopes  of  divine  liberty, 
Thoughts  the  most  dear  to  him,  and  poesy." 

Keats  has  four  instances  of  repetition,  Shelley  two, 
Tennyson  six  in  Arden,  and  ten  in  the  Lover's  Tale. 
In  contradiction  to  Mr.  Bridges,  Professor 
Saintsbury  says  of  rhyme  that  *'in  English  non- 
dramatic  blank  verse  it  is  nearly  fatal;  but  would 
only  be  found  out  in  practice."  ("Hist,  of  Eng. 
Prosody,"  2.  227  n.)  Mr.  Bridges  seems  to  imply 
that  a  careful  poet  would  leave  in  a  few  rhymes,  in 
order  not  to  seem  too  careful ;  Professor  Saintsbury 
seems  to  imply  that  a  novice  might  introduce  occa- 
sional rhymes  deliberately,  thinking  them  an  added 
grace  to  his  verse.  I  do  not  think  that  either  critic 
states  the  case  precisely  enough.  Rhetorical  repeti- 
tion, even  when  emphasized  by  putting  the  repeated 
words  at  the  ends  of  lines,  seems  as  legitimate  and 
effective  in  verse  as  in  prose;  but  I  have  not  come 

in  consecutive  lines)  :  'sweet'  ends  lines  641  and  645 ; 
'sun'  ends  642  and  651 ;  'night'  and  'moon'  end  respec- 
tively lines  647-8  and  655-6.  That  is  to  say:  the  effec- 
tiveness of  the  passage  does  not  depend  upon  any 
rhyme,  and  the  repetition  of  whole  phrases,  and  even 
of  whole  lines,  lessens  the  effect  which  the  repetition 
at  the  ends  of  the  lines  usually  has.  If  the  reader  will 
compare  these  passages  with  some  of  Arnold's,  in 
which  the  repetition  is  definitely  conscious,  it  will  be 
clear,  I  think,  that  Milton  does  not  avail  himself  of 
rhyme  or  repetition  at  the  end  of  the  line  to  enforce 
his  rhetorical  devices.     (See  p.  119.) 

36 


NOTE  ON  RHYME 

upon  a  single  instance  in  these  poets  (aside  from 
Blair's  concluding  couplet)  where  the  rhyme  did  not 
seem  to  me  either  accidental  or  careless — never  a 
definite,  consciously  permitted  device  of  the  poet. 


37 


11.     CiESURAS 

Thus  far  we  have  been  discussing  details  of  blank 
verse  which  affect  chiefly  the  lines  as  units  or  as 
parts  of  larger  groups.  Caesuras  come  next  in  order 
because  they  serve  a  double  function  in  blank  verse : 
they  contribute,  especially  in  connection  with  run- 
on  lines,  to  modify  the  line-rhythm,  and  within  the 
line  itself  they  serve  to  emphasize  the  various  ca- 
dences and  modulations. 

/^  A  caesura  is  a  break  within  the  line,  and  in  blank 
j  verse  always  coincides  with  the  end  of  a  syntactical 
I  group  or  phrase.  I  have  taken  account  only  of  those 
marked  by  punctuation — and  of  all  those  so  marked. 
Ordinarily,  it  is  true,  one  of  two  or  more  pauses 
within  the  line  is  the  principal  one;  often,  too,  this 
principal  one  is  so  clearly  dominant  that  the  others 
may  be  almost  or  entirely  neglected.  Ordinarily, 
too,  lines  which  have  no  internal  punctuation  demand 
or  may  have  a  caesura.  But  it  is  plainly  wrong  to 
assume  either  that  every  line  has  a  caesura  (although 
the  poet  may  make  it  so  delicate  that  only  a  micro- 
phone can  detect  it) ,  or  that  every  line  has  only  one 
caesura  of  which  we  need  to  take  account.  Some 
years  ago  I  undertook  to  record  the  caesuras  in  some 
2,750  lines  of  the  Idylls,  and  although  I  believed  in 
my  innocence  that  a  caesura  was  as  essential  to  the 
line  as  the  end  of  the  line  itself,  I  came  upon  twenty- 
five  or  thirty  lines  in  which  I  could  not  find  a 
caesura.  In  confining  myself  to  caesuras  which  the 
poet  (or  sometimes  his  printer)  has  marked  by 
punctuation,  I  do  not  assume  either  that  caesuras 
so  marked  are  invariably  emphatic,  or  that  lines 

38 


C^SURAS 

without  internal  punctuation  have  no  caesuras.  I 
know  that  many  caesuras  which  are  marked  by  punc- 
tuation are  no  more  emphatic  than  many  which  are 
not  marked,  but  I  confess  myself  unable  to  sift  out 
these  instances.  With  that  admission,  that  there  are 
unquestionable  degrees  of  delicacy  of  break  of 
which  I  attempt  no  record,  I  believe  that  I  have 
eliminated  from  my  figures  my  own  personal  equa- 
tion, and  that  in  keeping  a  record  of  unbroken  lines 
I  have  furnished  any  dissatisfied  reader  of  this  essay 
with  the  means  of  estimating  the  precise  amount  of 
my  delinquency.  I  may  add,  however,  that  if  ex- 
amining four  or  five  thousand  lines,  say,  of  a  ten- 
thousand  line  poem  gives  a  fairly  accurate  idea  of 
a  poet's  metrical  peculiarities  (and  I  have  tested  that 
time  and  again),  then  I  have  given  a  fairly  accurate 
notion  of  Milton's  use  of  caesuras  in  Paradise  Lost 
by  reporting  the  8,50o_caesuras  which  he  has  marked 
by  punctuation.  "Such  caesuras  as  there  are  in  his 
unbroken  lines — a  scant  thirty  per  cent  of  the  whole 
— are  practically  certain  to  be  hke  the  others  in 
their  distribution;  at  least  I  have  found  that  my 
own  attempts  to  record  caesuras  in  unbroken  lines  do 
not  vary  materially  from  the  proportions  in  lines 
where  the  caesuras  are  marked  by  punctuation. 
Moreover,  in  reporting  unbroken  lines  I  have  indi- 
cated what  would  not  be  distinguishable  otherwise, 
namely,  the  proportion  of  cases  in  which  Milton, 
for  example,  has  made  his  caesural  pauses  noticeably 
delicate  in  their  effect,  just  as  counting  "strong 
pauses"  furnished  a  record  of  caesuras-  which  are 
exceptionally  emphatic. 

Strong  pauses  are  those  breaks  in  the  line  indi- 
cated hke  endstopt  lines  by  punctuation  other  than 
a  comma.  Their  importance,  as  will  appear  later, 
depends  rather  upon  their  distribution  than  upon 
their  frequency. 

39 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

If  one  caesura  in  a  line  serves  to  mark  the  larger 
cadences,  two  or  more  should  tend  to  subordinate 
or  disguise  the  line-rhythm.  Of  Milton's  caesuras 
Mr.  Bridges  writes  ("Milton's  Prosody,"  24) : 
"There  are  sometimes  two  or  more  breaks  to  a  line : 
the  frequence  of  these  with  the  severity  of  the 
breaks,  is  a  distinction  of  Milton's  verse."  For  the 
'severity'  of  the  breaks,  see  page  56;  the  'fre- 
quence' I  have  tested  for  some  of  the  poets, 
with  these  results : 

TABLE  IV 

Per  cent  of  lines  with 

2caes.  3ormore.  Total. 

Young:  Night  Thoughts,  1-3,  5-7,  17.98  4.82  22.80 

Arnold:  Sohrab  and  Rustum 17.40  1.99  19.39 

Tennyson:  7  of  the  Idylls 14.54  3.71  18.25 

Browning:   Pauline,  Bp.   Bloug.,  R. 

&  B.,   1-2 13.42  2.05  15.47 

Landor:  Gebir  12.18  3.11  15.29 

Wordsworth:  Prelude,  1-5,  Excur- 
sion, 3-4 11.46  2.31  13.77 

Keats:    Hyperion    11.32  2.15  13.47 

Blair:  The  Grave 11.60  1.69  13.29 

Glover :  Leonidas 11.00  1.44  12.44 

Milton:  Paradise  Lost,  1-2,  4-5,  7-8    9.19  1.84  11.03 
Swinburne:     Atalanta    and    Erech- 

theus    9.81  1.31  1 1.02 

Shelley:   Alastor    8.61  1.66  10.27 

Gascoigne:  The  Steele  Glas 4.92  0.42  5.34 

Eight  of  these  men  distinctly  exceed  Milton  in 
'frequence'  of  breaks,  and  seven  of  the  eight  (all 
but  Glover)  have  three  or  more  caesuras  in  more 
lines  than  Milton.  But  the  proportion  of  lines  with 
more  than  one  break  is  not  very  great,  for  even  in 
Young,  whose  figures  are  double  those  of  Milton, 
under  one-fifth  of  the  lines  have  two  caesuras,  and 
under  one-twentieth  have  three  or  more.  Moreover, 
as  might  perhaps  have  been  expected,  in  the  few 
men  of  whom  I  have  record  (Arnold,  Keats,  Shelley, 

40 


C^SURAS 

and  Gascoigne),  one  of  the  two  or  more  pauses  is 
after  the  4th  or  6th  syllable  in  more  than  two-thirds 
of  the  lines. 

These  lines  with  two  or  more  caesuras  are  prac- 
tically corollaries  to  the  distribution  of  caesuras,  for 
of  those  who  distribute  their  caesuras  most  widely, 
Swinburne  alone  falls  below  Milton;  and  of  those 
who  exceed  Milton,  Glover  is  the  only  one  who  falls 
below  him  in  the  distribution  of  caesuras.  There  ap- 
pears, too,  a  similar  relation  between  lines  with  two 
or  more  caesuras  and  unbroken  Hues,  for  all  of  these 
men  who  have  more  lines  than  Milton  with  two  or 
more  caesuras  exceed  him  in  the  proportion  of  un- 
broken lines.^ 

As  to  the  first  of  these  functions  of  the  caesura, 
its  ability  to  modify  the  line-rhythm  is  greater  in 
blank  verse  than  in  other  forms,  as  is  evident  even 
in  Endymion,  and  overwhelmingly  convincing  in 
stanzas,  especially  in  metres  longer  or  shorter  than 
five  beats.  The  nature  of  this  modification  is  signi- 
ficant. A  comparison  of  the  records  for  the  88,000 
lines  of  blank  verse,  which  form  the  basis  for  this 
section  of  our  study,  with  some  23,000  lines  of  heroic 
couplets,  makes  it  clear  that  neither  rhyme  nor 
varying  proportions  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines 
have  any  effect  on  either  the  number  or  the  distribu- 
tion of  caesuras.  In  the  blank  verse,  for  instance, 
the  percentage  of  lines  with  caesuras  aiter  the  first  / 
syllable  ranges  from  0.78  in  Milton  to  6.20  in  / 
Arnold ;  after  the  2d  syllable,  from  3.89  in  Cowper 
to  13.08  in  Arnold;  after  the  8th  syllable,  from  1.18 
in  Gascoigne  to  12.52  in  Arnold;  and  after  the  9th 
syllable,  from  0.17  in  Blair  to  3.61  in  Browning. 
For  the  couplets,  the  figures  run:  after  the  ist 
syllable,    from    1.54   in    Chamberlayne    to    6.72    in 

1  For  the  distribution  of  caesuras,  see  p.  52 ;  for  un- 
broken lines,  see  p.  24. 

41 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Wither;  after  the  2d  syllable,  from  3.52  in  Browne 
to  7.43  in  Cowley;  after  the  8th  syllable,  from  1.26 
in  Dry  den  to  7.01  in  Chamberlayne ;  and  after  the 
9th  syllable,  from  none  in  Mrs.  Behn  to  3.69  in 
Chamberlayne.  But,  although  csesuras  may  be  just 
as  numerous  and  just  as  widely  distributed  in 
rhymed  as  in  blank  verse,  and  though  neither  quan- 
tity nor  distribution  seems  to  hold  any  relation  to 
either  run-on  or  endstopt  lines,  it  is  obvious  that 
all  three  of  these  things  (rhymed,  runron,  and  end- 
stopt lines)  have  a  considerable  effect  on  the  em- 
phasis of  the  csesuras.  In  couplets,  where  the  rhyme 
enforces  the  line-rhythm  (the  rhyme  is  so  sure  to 
mark  the  line-rhythm,  even  in  very  free  couplets, 
that  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  dwell  upon  the  added 
effect  of  endstopt  lines  in  couplets)  the  caesuras,  un- 
less they  are  marked  by  strong  pauses,  rarely  count 
in  the  movement  of  whole  passages.  In  blank  verse, 
however,  the  very  absence  of  the  rhyme  means  that 
the  csesuras  will  vary  in  their  effect  on  line-rhythm 
according  as  the  endstopt  lines  are  numerous  or 
jfew.  In  Gascoigne,  Surrey,  and  Young,  for  in- 
-  stance,  csesuras  have  relatively  little  effect  in  modify- 
ing line-rhythm,  but  in  Milton  and  most  of  the 
I  others,  csesuras  do  have  an  important  effect  just  be- 
'  cause  the  line-rhythm  is  so  little  enforced  by  the 
customary  devices. 

In  Tabled  V  and  VI,  I  have  for  convenience  in- 
dicated csesuras  as  'after'  a  syllable,  instead  of  'in 
the  middle'  or  'at  the  end'  of  a  foot — after  even 
syllables  if  at  the  end  of  a  foot,  after  odd  syllables 
if  in  the  middle  of  a  foot.  (I  do  not,  however,  be- 
lieve that  syllable-counting  is  a  sound  principle  of 
English  verse,  even  for  the  poetry  of  those  genera- 
tions which  certainly  thought  of  it  as  syllabic.)  Cse- 
suras in  trisyllabic  feet  I  have  counted  as  coming 
in  the  "middle,"  whether  they  fall  after  the  first  or 

42 


C^SURAS 

the  second  unstressed  syllable.  The  total  number 
of  these  caesuras  in  trisyllabic  feet  is  relatively  small 
— under  three  per  cent — but  their  existence  has  led 
to  debate  if  not  to  confusion.  Caesuras  after  the 
second  unstressed  syllable  of  a  trisyllabic  foot  do  not 
seem  to  have  caused  discussion,  probably  because 
the  caesura  is  immediately  followed  by  a  stressed 
syllable,  as  in 

But  what   if  he   our  Conqueror,   whom   I  now  / 

(P.  L.   I.   143)' 
or 

By  natural  piety;  nor  a  lofty  mind  (Excurs.  3.266) 

I  have  not  observed  that  any  poet  makes  especial 
use  of  these  caesuras.  In  six  books  of  Paradise  Lost 
they  number  66  out  of  4,123 — only  1.60%  of  the 
total  caesuras ;  and  in  five  books  of  the  Prelude  and 
two  of  the  Excursion,  I  found  y2  out  of  4,032 — only 
1.78%  of  the  total  caesuras. 

Where  the  caesura  falls  between  unstressed  syl- 
lables, however,  some  metrists  consider  the  first 
syllable  extra-metrical,  because  it  looks  like  an  ex- 
tension to  the  caesural  pause  of  the  device  familiar  at 
the  end  of  the  line — the  feminine  ending.  A  few 
examples  will  illustrate  both  the  eflfect  of  this  caesura 
and  its  possible  explanations. 

1  For  she  was  a  great  lady. 

And  when  they  reached 

(Pelleas  and   Ettarre,   118) 

2  Macb.    Look  on't  again  I  dare  not. 

Lady  M.  Infirm  of  purpose.   (Macb.  2.  2.  52) 

3  Half  flying;  behoves  him  now  both  oare  and  sail 

(P.  L,  2.  942) 

4  Had  best  be  loosed  forever;  but  think  or  not, 

(Merlin  &  V.  340) 

5  The  organs  of  her  fancie,  and  with  them  forge 

(P.  L.  4.  802) 

6  Low  in  the  city,  and  on  a  festal  day 

(Merlin  &  Vivien,    63) 

7  In  equal  ruin;  into  what  Pit  thou  seest        (P.  L.  i,  91) 

43 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

8    Me  from  attempting.    Wherefore  do  I  assume 

(P.  L.  2.  450) 

0    Whatever  doing,  what  can  we  suffer  more? 

(P.  L.  2.  162) 

The  important  question  is  whether  the  unstressed 
syllable  before  the  caesura  is  extra-metrical  or  not. 
In  the  first  two  lines,  because  the  two  sections  of 
the  line  belong  to  different  paragraphs  or  to  differ- 
ent speakers,  it  seems  more  reasonable  to  call  the 
syllable  extra-metrical  than  to  assign  it  to  the  fol- 
lowing foot.  In  lines  3  and  4,  the  strong  pause  in- 
clines one  to  the  same  explanation,  but  in  lines  5 
and  6  it  is  certainly  not  hard  to  say  simply  that  the 
caesura  comes  in  the  middle  of  a  trisyllabic  foot. 
Lines  7  to  9  may  be  scanned  so  as  to  bring  the 
caesura  either  between  unstressed  syllables  or  in  the 
middle  of  a  dissyllabic  foot,  according  as  you  em- 
phasize the  metre  or  the  rhetoric.  When  read  by 
themselves,  the  rhetoric  seems  obviously  dominant, 
but  when  read  with  their  context — with  groups  of 
lines  in  which  the  rhythm  is  strongly  marked — the 
decision  is  not  so  easy.  If  we  start  with  lines  i 
and  2,  we  may  argue  that  lines  3  to  6  are  clear  ex- 
tensions of  the  extra-metrical  syllable  to  less  em- 
phatic instances,  and  we  may  point  out  that  the  un- 
stressed syllable  in  the  feminine  ending  is  considered 
extra-metrical  whether  it  is  followed  by  punctuation 
or  not.  If  we  start  with  lines  5  and  6,  however,  we 
may  argue  that  in  lines  i  to  4  the  increased  em- 
phasis of  the  caesura  has  led  us  to  overlook  the  real 
fact,  and  we  may  point  out  that  lines  like  5  and 
6  are  in  the  majority — nine-tenths  in  Paradise  Lost, 
two-thirds  in  the  Idylls;  and  in  addition  that,  so 
far  as  I  have  observed  (I  admit  that  my  investiga- 
tion is  not  exhaustive) ,  this  *extra'  syllable  is  never 
a  heavy  syllable,  like  so  many  found  in  feminine 
endings  (see  p.  30).    Moreover,  I  have  come  upon 

44 


C^SURAS 

no  line  in  which  a  caesura  after  an  unstressed  syl- 
lable is  followed  by  two  unstressed  syllables — ^that 
is  to  say,  I  have  noted  no  instance  in  which,  con- 
sidering the  metre  alone,  the  syllable  before  the 
csesura  must  be  extra-metrical.  Nevertheless,  I  in- 
cline to  think  that  the  dramatists  looked  upon  this 
type  of  caesura  as  an  extension  of  the  use  of  the 
feminine  ending  (and  we  can  be  fairly  certain  that 
John  Fletcher  at  least  thought  that  the  redundant 
syllables  at  the  end  of  the  line  were  extra-metrical)  ; 
that  Milton  was  at  most  very  sparing  in  using  this 
device  and  very  careful  about  the  character  of  the 
extra  syllables;  and  that  Tennyson  tended  some- 
what to  the  'license'  of  the  dramatists.^ 

Another  question,  quite  as  important  as  that  of 
extra-metrical  syllables,  is:  Just  what  part  has  the 
caesura  in  tht  Jime^oi  the  line  ?  To  begin  with,  it 
is  worth  while  to  point  out  one  or  two  differences 
between  the  caesural  pause  and  the  line-pause.    The 

^  It  is,  to  be  sure,  possible  to  avoid  the  term  extra- 
metrical,  by  saying  that  the  foot  preceding  the  caesura 
is  an  amphibrach  (x'x).  That,  however,  is  only  an 
apparent  avoiding  of  the  difficulty,  for  in  the  first  place, 
such  feet  occur  in  the  line  only  before  a  caesura  or  at 
the  end  of  the  line  (as  feminine  endings),  and  feminine 
endings  occasionally  have  two  redundant  syllables. 
It  is  just  as  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  extra 
syllables  are  additions  to  the  end  of  the  line  or  to  a 
section  of  it,  and  not  mere  variations  in  the  feet. 

These  caesuras  have  sometimes  been  called  'epic,' 
but  very  inaptly,  for,  as  has  been  often  remarked,  they 
are  at  least  as  common  in  the  drama  as  in  the  epic, 
and  they  are  certainly  not  important  features  of  any 
non-dramatic  blank  verse  which  I  have  examined.  For 
example,  in  six  books  of  Paradise  Lost  I  found  only 
52,  of  which  18  are  doubtful  cases  (because  they  in- 
volve the  scansion  of  words  in  -able) ;  in  the  Night 
Thoughts  I  found  none  at  all;  in  three  books  of  the 
Prelude  I  found  3,  and  in  two  books  of  the  Excursion  only 
two;  and  in  four  of  the  Idylls  I  found  only  38. 

45 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

line-pause  is  clearly  metrical  but  has  a  strong  effect 
upon  syntax  and  rhetoric  in  that  (even  in  the 
drama)  the  line-pause  rarely  is  made  to  cut  into 
the  midst  of  a  grammatical  or  syntactical  phrase; 
when  it  does  so  we  have  a  'light'  or  a  'weak'  ending, 
and  these  endings,  it  may  be  observed,  are  the  last 
devices  by  which  the  dramatists  minimised  the 
difference  between  verse  and  prose.  In  five-beat 
verse  at  least,  the  pause  at  the  end  of  the  line  has 
no  place  in  the  time  of  the  verse,  although  its 
strength  or  lightness  may  contribute  to  the  rap- 
idity or  slowness  of  a  passage. 

The  caesural  pause,  on  the  other  hand,  has  both 
rhetorical  and  metrical  functions.  Its  metrical  im- 
portance is  more  obvious  in  alexandrines  and  sep- 
tenaries  than  in  the  five-beat  line.     Its  rhetorical 

/importance  is  evident  when  we  recall  that  the  caesura 
invariably  corresponds  (in  serious  verse)  to  a  break, 
however  slight,  between  grammatical  or  syntactical 
groups.  Its  effect  upon  the  time  of  a  verse  is  like 
that  of  retardo  in  music.    For  example,  in  a  line  like 

!  the  always  quoted 

Rocks,  Caves,  Lakes,  Fens,  Bogs,  Dens,  and  shades  of 
death  (P.  L.  2.  621) 

the  six  caesuras  call  for  a  slower  reading  of  the  line 
than  would  be  given  to 
Of  happiness  and  final  misery.^  (P.  L.  2.  563) 

But — and  this  is  the  important  point — both  lines 
have  five  beats ;  in  other  words,  the  caesura  does  not 

1  Coventry  Patmore  is  the  only  critic  I  know  of  who 
maintains  that  the  line-pause  of  the  five-beat  line  is 
equivalent  to  an  extra  foot. 

2 1  do  not  forget  that  in  both  these  lines  the  quality 
and  the  collocation  of  the  syllables  have  as  much  effect 
on  the  movement  of  the  lines  as  the  presence  or  ab- 
sence of  csesuras,  but  these  considerations  do  not  affect 
my  present  point. 

46 


C^SURAS 

affect  either  the  number  of  beats  or  the  number  of 
syllables  used  to  fill  the  time  of  those  beats — is  not 
used  as  equivalent  to  a  rest  in  music,  but  only  to 
modify  the  rate  of  delivery.  In  the  Princess,  III,  42, 
Tennyson  has  this  line : 

"Why — these — arc — men"  ;    I    shuddered ;    "and   you  know 
it." 

Here  we  have  the  usual  five  beats  upon  alternate 
syllables,  but  I  doubt  if  any  one  would  have  found 
fault  if  Tennyson  had  made  each  of  his  dashes  count 
as  a,  rest  and  had  ended  his  line  with  "shuddered," 
thus: 

" — Why — these — are — men" ;   I  shuddered. 

But  I  have  found  not  one  instance  in  non-dramatic 
blank  verse  where  the  csesural  pause  counts  in  the 
time  of  the  line  by  serving  as  a  rest.  (I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  such  lines  are  unknown,  or  un- 
desirable, or  impossible ;  I  merely  record  that  in  the 
poets  here  discussed  I  have  found  no  line  which 
I  could  scan  that  way.  Perhaps  I  may  add  that  in 
this  matter  as  in  some  others,  I  am  not  concerned 
to  maintain  the  entire  absence  of  such  lines ;  the  im- 
portant fact  is  that  they  are  very  few.)  The  only 
lines  I  have  found  in  non-dramatic  blank  verse  which 
call  for  rests  to  fill  out  the  time  are  the  very  rare 
nine-syllable  lines,  in  which  the  time  is  made  up, 
not  by  a  c?esural  pause,  but  by  the  line-pause.  (For 
comments  on  monosyllabic  feet,  see  p.  yy). 

In  blank  verse,  then,  the  metrical  importance  of 
the  caesura  seems  to  me  almost  entirely  due  to  its 
rhejori^ah  "function- -of-^nd^i^adngjogical^ 
rhythms.  In  this  constant  accommodation  between 
rhetoric  and  metre,  or,  to  put  it  in  other  words,  in 
this  superimposing  of  the  irregular  prose  rhythm 
upon  its  common  denominator,  the  regular  metrical 
rhythm,  we  have  the  same  opportunity  for  delicate 

47 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

charm  that  we  shall  find  later  in  the  effort  to  fit 
combinations  of  syllables  to  the  arbitrary  time  of 
the  metre.  (See  p.  68.)  The  importance  of  the 
csesural  pause  in  blank  verse  is  not  likely  to  be 
overestimated,  but  the  necessity  of  its  presence  as  an 
essential  part  of  practically  every  line  has  always 
been  overemphasized  by  the  metrists.  Happily,  in 
this  as  in  so  many  other  things,  the  poets  have  not 
always  been  able  to  make  their  practice  agree  with 
their  precepts,  even  when  they  thought  they  were 
observing  them  most  closely. 

TABLE   V 

CAESURAS  I 

Tot.  C^suras. 
Poet                                   Forms                        Ll.  Tot.  Mid.  End. 
Milton,             Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Re- 
gained   12628  oSii  J4.00  66.00 

Surrey,            Aeneid,  Books  II  and  IV "2611  ii6g  18.82  BloS" 

Gascoigne,      The  Steele  Glas 1179  459  17.6s  82.35 

Akenside,        The  Pleasures  of  Imagination 1999  1339  48.80  51.20 

Blair,                The  Grave 767  575  28.00  72.00 

Glover,             Leonidas ...    7321  5722  53.80  46.20 

Mallet,  The  Excursion,  and  Amyntor  and 

Theodora 2383  2254  32.13  67.87 

Somervile,       The  Chase, B'ield  Sports,  Hobbinol    3560  3085  18.39  81.61 

Thomson,        The  Seasons 5422  3815  34.34  65.66 

Young,  The  Night  Thoughts,  Books  I  to 

VII    S902  5823  42.12  57.88 

Cowper,          The  Task 5185  3262  42.99  57.01 

Landor,           Gebir 1733  1260  50.39  49.61 

Keats,              Hyperion 883  636  40.00  60.00 

Shelley,           Alastor 720  522  31.41  68.59 

Wordsworth,  Excursion;  the  Prelude,  Books  I 

to  VII 13020  10257  45.77  54.23 

Arnold,            Sohrab  and  Rustum 902  825  33.00  67.00 

Browning,       Pauline,   Bp.  Blougram,  R.  &  B., 

I,  II,  III,  VI 8750  6831  ^1.51  48.49 

Tennyson,       The  Idylls  of  the  King  11322  8127  46.14  53.86 

Swinburne,     Atalanta  in  Calydon,  and  Erech- 

theus 2350  1580  56.13  43.87 

The  total  lines  number  880^7.     Mid.  means  percentage  of  caesuras  at 

the  middle  of  feet.    End.  means  the  percentage  at  the  end  of  feet. 


48 


C^SURAS 

TABLE    VI 
C^SURAS  II 


Poet 


Percentage  of  C^suras  After 


Milton 

Surrey 

Gascoigne.. 
Akenside. . . 

Blair 

Glover 

Mallet 

Somervile . . 
Thomson.. . 

Young 

Cowper 

Landor  .... 

Keats 

Shelley 

Wordsworth 

Arnold 

Browning  . . 
Tennyson  . . 
Swinburne.. 


T.OO 

4.61 
4-57 
2.53 
4.34 
3-32 
2.75 
1.84 
6.97 
5.46 
1.62 

5-39 
3.00 
2.87 
6.61 
6.78 
7.48 
6.92 
8.67 


11.20 

13-94 
6.12 
9.04 
8.05 
6.65 
5.64 
7.36 

10.32 
6.19 

12.22 

11.80 
9.19 

8.55 

14.30 

8.85 

9-39 
10.50 


10.06 
3-93 
3.05 
5-75 
347 
4-85 
5-37 
2.85 
3-74 
7.10 
9.81 

10.80 
9.77 
5.55 
7.45 
9.00 

10.35 

11.60 

7.02 


II. 19 

4.87 

3-92 

20.01 

10.08 

25.23 

14.81 

8.20 

13.70 

15.86 

14.65 

14.36 

12.42 

7.85 

15.92 

9.00 

16.39 

11.02 

11.51 


24.98 
13.60 
5.88 
21.21 
35-30 
11.83 
26.39 
38.37 
25.19 

17.37 
22.25 
15.08 
21.54 
24.90 
16.50 
21.09 
13.10 
13.61 
8.41 


10.83 

4.79 

3.26 

19.85 

9.91 

18.71 

8.25 

4.63 

7.75 

11.55 

15.42 

17.77 

14.77 
12.64 
13.08 
7.80 
13.67 

13-39 
26.07 


9-48 
3-76 
3-05 
4.10 
6.08 
7.58 
5.00 
8.03 
6.00 

I'V 
6.89 
9.12 
5.18 

10.91 
9.90 

13.70 
8.94 
9.52 

12.42 


0.87 
0.68 
0.65 
0.59 
0.17 
1.66 
0.88 
0.77 
2.14 
2.15 
1.44 
1.90 
1.25 
2.49 
1.87 
0.36 
3.61 

3-25 
1.58 


In  only  one  trivial  point  do  all  the  19  men  in 
the  list  agree — in  all  of  them  the  caesura  after  the 
9th  syllable  is  least  used.  In  only  15  of  them  does 
the  caesura  after  the  ist  syllable  hold  8th  place;  the 
exceptions  are  Gascoigne,  Blair,  and  Thomson,  who 
were  rather  fond  of  beginning  lines  with  exclama- 
tions; and  Swinburne,  who  was  fonder  than  the 
others  of  running  a  line  over  just  one  syllable  into 
the  next.  Only  Swinburne,  Tennyson,  and  Brown- 
ing, however,  manage  to  get  more  than  10  per  cent 
of  their  caesuras  into  those  two  places,  although 
Thomson  comes  near  them. 

In  his  "Notes  of  Instruction,"  Gascoigne  said  of 
the  caesura,  "In  mine  opinion  ...  in  a  verse  of 
tenne  it  will  be  placed  at  the  ende  of  the  first  foure 
sillables,"  and  it  will  be  observed  that  he  lived  up 


49 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

to  his  opinion  more  rigidly  than  any  one  else  in  our 
list.  In  opposition  to  Gascoigne,  Professor  Corson 
('Trimer  of  English  Verse,"  195)  thinks  that  the 
pause  after  the  6th  syllable  is  the  normal  caesura, 
for  he  calls  it  "a.  secondary  theme  to  the  primary 
5x'."  So  far  as  our  19  poets  are  concerned,  in  9 
of  them  the  caesura  after  the  4th  syllable  comes  first, 
and  in  only  7  does  the  pause  after  the  6th  syllable 
come  first.  Milton,  who  clearly  preferred  the  pause 
after  the  6th  syllable  (and  whose  verse  was  the  basis 
for  Professor  Corson's  statement),  is  followed  by 
Akenside,  Blair,  Somervile,  and  Cpwper  in  the  i8th 
century,  and  by  only  Shelley  and  Arnold  in  the  19th. 
On  the  other  hand,  Gascoigne  and  Surrey  are  fol- 
lowed by  Mallet,  Thomson,  and  Young  in  the  i8th 
century,  and  by  Keats,  Wordsworth,  Browning,  and 
Tennyson  in  the  19th,  so  that  Professor  Corson's 
dictum  is  certainly  wrong,  if  he  meant  it  to  cover 
the  general  practice  of  the  poets,  or  even  that  of 
the  greater  poets.  The  reason  why  these  four  19th 
century  men  have  not  followed  Milton  is,  I  suspect, 
not  a  definite  preference  for  the  pause  after  the  4th 
syllable,  but  the  result  of  a  constant  effort  to  avoid 
the  obvious,  a  fear  of  monotony,  an  unwillingness 
to  do  as  Milton  did  and  recognise  that  the  beaten 
path  has  many  advantages  of  smoothness  and 
frmiiliarity.^ 

1  Of  14  writers  of  couplets,  only  Oldham,  Crashaw, 
and  Sandys  have  more  strong  pauses  after  the  6th 
syllable  than  after  the  4th;  only  Randolph,  Shelley, 
and  Cowley  have  anything  like  an  even  distribution 
between  the  4th  and  the  6th.  Six  of  them,  including 
Waller,  Denham,  Dryden,  and  Pope,  have  more  than 
twice  as  many  strong  pauses  after  the  4th  syllable  as 
after  the  6th.  These  statements  are  based  on  only 
some  13.600  lines,  but  together  with  the  blank  verse, 
they  indicate  that  the  division  into  2-3  is  distinctly 
more  common  than  that  into  3-2.  The  tendency  of 
the  English  alexandrine  to  break  exactly  and  regularly 

50 


C^SURAS 

Akenside  and  Lander  are  the  only  men  in  whose 
verse  the  pause  after  the  4th  syllable  is  not  either 
first  or  second.  In  15  of  the  men — all  but  Gas- 
coigne,  Glover,  Browning,  and  Swinburne — the 
pause  after  the  6th  syllable  is  either  first  or  second ; 
but  in  only  13  are  there  more  caesuras  after  both  the 
4th  and  the  6th  syllables  than  elsewhere.  Although 
only  8  men  agree  in  making  the  pause  after  the  5th 
syllable  3rd  in  order,  the  tendency  to  mass  the 
pauses  in  the  middle  of  the  line  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  only  6  men — Swinburne,  Arnold,  Browning, 
Landor,  Tennyson,  and  Wordsworth — all  modern — 
have  under  half  their  caesuras  in  the  three  middle 
places.  Moreover,  although  only  these  six  men  last 
mentioned,  and  Glover,  have  under  40%  of  their 
pauses  after  the  4th  and  6th  syllables,  the  tendency 
of  the  five-beat  iambic  rhythm  to  divide  into  2-3  or 
3-2  groups  as  against  an  equal  division  after  the 
5th  syllable  is  marked,  in  the  bigger  poets  as  in 
the  lesser,  for  Swinburne,  Landor,  and  Glover  are 
the  only  men  who  have  more  caesuras  at  any  two 
other  places  than  after  the  4th  and  6th  syllables. 

The  diversity  of  practice  is  shown  by  a  compari- 
son of  the  places  which  come  first,  second,  and 
third.  In  Mallet,  Thomson,  Young,  and  Words- 
worth, the  order  is  4,  6,  5 ;  in  Milton,  Blair,  and 
Somervile,  it  is  6,  4,  5 ;  in  Cowper  and  Shelley  it  is 
6,  4,  7;  and  in  Keats  and  Tennyson,  4,  6,  7.  The 
average  of  the  whole  nineteen  gives  4,  6,  5,  with  7 
in  4th  place.  No  two  others  agree,  except  that  4, 
5,  6,  in  varying  orders  have  the  first  three  places 
in  nine  of  the  men.^ 

in  the  middle  is  well  known;  the  2-3  formula  for  the 
five-beat  line  may  be  similarly  inherent  in  the  structure 
of  the  line, 

1  Professor  Mayor  ("Chaps,  on  Eng.  Metre,"  209,  of 
2d  ed.)    is  right  in  saying  that  "the  pause  after  the  4th 

51 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

In  the  relative  proportions  of  caesuras  at  the  mid- 
dle and  at  the  ends  of  feet,  Milton  is  followed  pretty 
closely  by  Blair,  Mallet,  Thomson,  Keats,  Shelley, 
and  Arnold — that  is,  not  by  Wordsworth,  Browning, 
or  Tennyson,  the  three  most  voluminous  of  the  19th 
century  poets.  Surrey,  Gascoigne,  and  Somervile 
form  a  group  with  more  than  four-fifths  of  their 
pauses  at  the  ends  of  feet;  Akenside  and  Landor 
come  very  near  an  even  division,  but  Glover,  Brown- 
ing, and  Swinburne  are  the  only  ones  who  have 
distinctly  more  at  the  middle  than  at  the  ends  of 
feet.  These  figures,  again,  indicate  the  tendency 
of  the  iambic  line  to  break  at  the  ends  of  feet.  In 
Akenside,  Glover,  and  Swinburne,  the  balance  in 
favor  of  pauses  at  the  middle  is  due  to  an  excessive 
fondness  for  the  pause  after  the  7th  syllable. 
:  Although  Milton  has  47.50%  of  his  caesuras  after 
I  the  4th  and  6th  syllables,  he  has  more  than  ten  per 
1  cent  in  each  of  five  places — after  3,  4,  5,  6,  7 — and  is 
i  followed  in  this  by  Young,  Landor,  Keats,  Brown- 
ing, Tennyson,  and  Swinburne.  (Blair,  Shelley, 
Wordsworth,  and  Arnold  just  miss  belonging  in  this 
list.)  Of  these  men,  only  Tennyson  and  Browning 
follow  Milton  exactly ;  Swinburne  has  his  high  per- 
centages after  2,  4,  5,  7,  8;  Young  and  Keats  (and 
Blair)  after  2,  4,  5,  6,  7;  (Shelley's  are  after  2,  4,  6, 
7,  8 ;  Wordsworth's  after  4,  5,  6,  7,  8)  ;  Landor  is 

seems  to  be  Tennyson's  favourite,"  for  Tennyson  has 
nearly  8%  more  there  than  anywhere  else;  but  when 
he  adds  that  Browning  'prefers'  that  after  the  5th  and 
7th,  he  is  somewhat  in  error,  for  in  Browning,  although 
his  order  is  4,  5,  6,  7,  the  percentages  vary  too  little 
to  establish  any  marked  preference.  About  Swinburne, 
however,  Professor  Mayor  is  clearly  within  bounds 
when  he  says  that  Swinburne  used  the  pause  after  the 
7th  syllable  in  his  Erechtheus  "twice  as  often  as  any 
other  pause,"  for  in  that  poem  the  pause  after  the  7th 
syllable  reaches  36.67%,  as  against  12.69%  after  the 
5th  syllable,  its  nearest  competitor. 

52 


CAESURAS 

unique  in  having  over  ten  per  cent  in  each  of  six 
places,  after  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  and  7.  Gascoigne,  who  has 
over  ten  per  cent  only  after  2  and  4,  and  Somervile, 
who  has  over  ten  per  cent  only  after  4  and  6,  have 
the  most  limited  distribution  of  caesuras;  Surrey 
comes  next  with  more  than  ten  per  cent  only  after 
2,  4,  and  6 ;  Arnold  has  over  ten  per  cent  only  after 
4,  6  and  8,  and  is  thus  the  only  poet  of  ability  who 
distributes  his  caesuras  chiefly  at  the  ends  of  feet. 
The  six  who  mass  their  caesuras  most  solidly  (in  only 
two  or  three  places)  are  Gascoigne  and  Surrey — 
pre-Shaksperian ;  Thomson,  Blair,  Mallet,  and  Som- 
ervile— all  1 8th  century  men,  and  all  but  Thomson 
negligible.  The  facts  here  set  forth  furnish  inter- 
esting confirmation  of  one  of  the  oldest  axioms  in 
the  criticism  of  blank  verse,  namely,  that  its  excel- 
lence is  largely  determined  by  the  distribution  of 
pauses.^ 

A  simple  mode  of  comparison  for  the  various, 
pauses  is  to  note  how  the  men  follow  or  vary  from\ 
Milton.  Milton  has  almost  exactly  one-fourth  of  ^ 
his  pauses  after  the  6th  syllable;  in  this  he  is  ex- 
ceeded or  approximated  by  only  Blair,  Mallet,  Som- 
ervile, Thomson,  and  Shelley.  Milton  has  22.52% 
after  the  4th  syllable;  in  this  he  is  materially  ex- 
ceeded by  five  men,  and  approximated  by  five  others, 
so  that  eight  fall  distinctly  below  him.  After  the 
3rd,  5th,  and  7th  syllables,  he  has  about  10% 
each ;  Tennyson  is  the  only  other  poet  who  has  those 
figures  for  all  three  places ;  though  Blair  has  for  the 
5th  and  7th,  and  Arnold  for  the  3rd  and  5th  syl- 
lables. While  seven  men  have  more  than  Milton 
after  the  2d  syllable,  only  Shelley,  Arnold,  and  Swin- 
burne have  distinctly  more  after  the  8th  syllable, 

1  Although  much  punctuation  increases  the  total 
number  of  caesuras  in  Young's  case,  it  does  not  affect 
the  proportions  of  their  distribution. 

53 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

and  only  Landor,  Wordsworth,  Browning,  and  Ten- 
nyson Gonie  near  Milton's  figures.  After  the  9th 
syllable  all  the  moderns  except  Arnold  have  from 
two  to  four  times  as  many  caesuras  as  Milton,  and 
every  one  of  the  eighteen  poets  has  more  than  he 
after  the  ist  syllable. 

Gascoigne  and  Surrey,  with  61.65%  and  52.60% 
of  their  caesuras  after  the  4th  syllable,  have  broken 
all  records  for  monotony  of  pause.  Their  nearest 
competitor  is  Somervile,  with  38.37%  and  Blair  with 
35.30%,  both  after  the  6th  syllable.,  Gascoigne,  Sur- 
rey, Mallet,  Somervile,  and  Thomson  are  the  only 
men  with  more  than  25%  after  the  4th  syllable,  and 
Blair,  Somervile,  Mallet,  and  Thomson  the  only 
ones  with  more  than  25%  after  the  6th  syllable. 
Akenside  has  about  20%  each  after  the  4th,  5th,  6th, 
and  7th  syllables,  but  Glover  with  25.23%  is  the 
only  one  who  has  more  pauses  after  the  5th  syllable 
than  elsewhere.  After  the  7th  syllable,  Swinburne 
has  26.07%,  iTiore  than  twice  as  many  as  he  has 
anywhere  else;  his  only  rivals  after  the  7th  syllable 
are  Akenside,  Glover,  and  Landor,  with  from  18  to 
20%. 

On  the  whole,  then,  taking  mere  proportions  of 
caesuras,  without  reference  to  their  possible  relations 
to  other  technical  devices,  surprisingly  few  of  the 
men  have  followed  Milton's  lead  in  the  details  of 
distribution,  though  the  19th  century  men  have  fol- 
lowed him  in  distributing  over  five  or  six  places, 
instead  of  massing  at  two  or  three  as  Surrey  and 
Gascoigne  did.  The  i8th  century  men,  though 
neither  so  free  nor  so  successful  in  their  distribu- 
tion as  the  19th  century  men,  had — to  an  extent  they 
are  not  often  given  credit  for — both  a  fondness  for 
experiment,  and  success  in  avoiding  in  their  blank 
verse  the  technical  peculiarities  of  the  couplet.  The 
later  men  have  been  much  more  inclined  to  follow 

54 


C-^SURAS 

Milton  in  distributing  caesuras  than  to  imitate  his 
bold  massing  at  the  places  where  they  would  nor- 
mally fall  unless  the  poet  took  special  pains  to  avoid 
those  places.  It  is  not  too  much,  I  think,  to  suggest 
that  Milton  has  the  advantage  over  his  19th  century 
successors  in  that  he  is  not  chargeable,  as  they  are, 
with  preciosity — with  avoiding  the  solider  virtues 
of  the  instrument  in  favor  of  its  showier,  more 
startling  nimblenesses. 

The  caesuras  which  I  have  taken  account  of  are 
punctuated  by  marks  varying  from  commas  to 
periods,  and  naturally  those  marked  by  strong 
pauses  will  count  for  more  than  the  others.  In  the 
case  of  Paradise  Lost  it  is  instructive  to  put  side 
by  side  the  distribution  of  the  total  number  of 
caesuras  and  of  the  strong  pauses : 

Mid.   End,    12         3  456  789 

Caesuras.. 34.00   66.00    1.00   8.89    10.06    22.52    11. 19    24.98    10.82   9.48   0.87 

(I) 
Str.Pauses31.91   67.64   0.17    5.98     8.23   24.70   13.37   2962     9.89   7-34  0.25 

The  significant  thing  is  that  the  strong  pauses  tend 
more  than  the  caesuras  to  the  middle  of  the  line,  for 
after  the  4th,  5th,  and  6th  syllables,  Milton  has 
67.69%  of  his  strong  pauses,  as  against  58.69%  of 
caesuras  in  general.  Newcomb,  the  only  other  writer 
of  blank  verse  whose  distribution  of  strong  pauses 
I  have  noted,  masses  72.58%  after  the  5th,  6th,  and 
7th  syllables  (he  is  like  Akenside,  Glover,  Landor, 
and  Swinburne  in  his  frequent  use  of  the  pause  after 
the  7th  syllable),  and  57.08%  after  the  4th,  5th,  and 
6th  syllables.  I^he  scanty  records  which  I  have  for 
the  distribution  of  strong  pauses  in  heroic  couplets 
confirm  this  tendency  toward  the  middle  of  the 
line.  In  13,653  lines  of  couplets  by  14  poets,  the 
percent  of  strong  pauses  after  the  4th,  5th,  and  6th 

1  These  percentages  I  have  compiled  from  the  table 
in  Corson's  "Primer  of  English  Verse,"  194-5. 

55 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

syllables  averages  70.16,  with  a  range  of  from  50 
in  Shelley's  Epipsychidion  to  87.50  in  Denham's 
Cooper's  Hill.  Omitting  Marvell  and  Shelley  (the 
only  ones  who  fall  below  Milton's  percentage),  the 
average  is  73.74 — not  so  much  above  Milton  as  one 
might  expect.  Because  of  this  massing  of  strong 
pauses  near  the  middle  of  the  line,  the  caesuras  near 
the  ends  are  not  often  marked  by  strong  punctua- 
tion ;  in  other  words,  the  caesuras  near  the  ends  of  the 
Hne  are  used  chiefly  for  the  subtler  modulations.  Al- 
though this  tendency  of  the  five-beat  iambic  line  to 
break  most  often  and  most  'severely'  at  the  middle 
is  strong,  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  one  pro- 
nounced pause  in  the  less  usual  places  is  as  emphatic 
as  a  score  in  the  middle,  so  that  a  poet  who  indulged 
very  freely  in  strong  pauses  near  the  ends  of  the 
line  would  betray  a  mannerism,  as  Swinburne  does 
in  Mary  Stuart  (cf.  p.  25,  note). 

Mr.  Bridges  claims  for  Milton's  verse  as  a  dis- 
tinction the  'severity'  of  the  breaks  ("Milton's 
Prosody,"  24).  Milton's  'distinction'  in  this  respect 
is  at  least  not  marked,  for  although  he  has  strong 
pauses  in  23.31%  of  his  lines,  Wordsworth  has 
them  in  21.17%  of  his  lines,  Newcomb  in  25.78%, 
Young  in  30%,  and  Browning  in  Pauline,  and 
Paracelsus,  in  36.64%.  Milton's  strong  pauses, 
moreover,  occur  in  only  about  six-twentieths  of  the 
lines  which  have  caesuras;  in  Newcomb,  in  about 
thirteen-fortieths,  in  Wordsworth  in  seven-twenti- 
eths, in  Young  in  nine-twentieths,  and  in  Brown- 
ing in  about  twelve-twentieths.  In  the  couplets  of 
Dryden,  Waller,  Pope,  and  Chapman,  the  lines  with 
strong  pauses  amount  to  about  two-,  three-,  four-, 
and  five-twentieths  respectively  of  the  lines  which 
contain  caesuras.  These  proportions,  as  already  said 
(cf.  p.  42),  bear  no  relation  to  the  percent  of  end- 
stopt  lines  in  either  couplets  or  blank  verse,  for  al- 

56 


C^SURAS 

though  Pope  and  Dryden  have  almost  the  same  per- 
cent of  endstopt  Hnes,  Pope  has  nearly  twice  as 
many  strong  pauses  as  Dryden.  In  blank  verse, 
Young  and  Browning,  who  have  the  highest  percent- 
ages of  end-stopt  lines,  have  also  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  strong  pauses.  However,  unless  my  evidence 
is  inadequate  and  therefore  misleading,  the  differ- 
ence between  the  proportions  of  strong  pauses  in 
couplets  and  in  blank  verse  points  clearly  to  the  far 
greater  emphasis  of  the  line-rhythm  in  the  couplet. 
When  the  distribution  of  caesuras  is  compared 
with  the  proportions  of  unbroken  lines,  I  find  a  rela- 
tion which  may  be  accidental,  though  it  does  not 
seem  so.  Landor,  the  only  one  who  has  more  than 
ten  per  cent  of  caesuras  at  each  of  six  places,  has 
more  unbroken  lines  than  any  one  but  Surrey  and 
Gascoigne.  Of  the  six  others  who  have  ten  per  cent 
in  each  of  five  places,  Milton  and  Young  have  about 
29%  of  their  lines  unbroken,  Browning  has  36%, 
and  Keats,  Tennyson,  and  Swinburne  over  40%. 
Whether  there  is  any  fundamental  connection  be- 
tween these  two  things  I  am  not  sure ;  at  least  it  is 
obvious  that  the  men  who  distributed  their  pauses 
most  widely  were  also  the  ones  who  learned  best 
the  value  of  long  cadences. 


57 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

TABLE  VII 


Poet 


Pkrckntage  of  Total  and 
After 


'Run-on'     C.i^suras 


Milton 

Surrey 

Gascoigne,.. 
Akenside  — 

Blair 

Glover 

Mallet 

Somervile. 
Thomson  — 

Young  

Cowper 

Landor 

Keats 

Shelley 

Wordsworth. 

Arnold 

Browning — 
Tennyson. .. 
Swinburne  .. 


4.61 

c 
4.57 


G.46 
0.42 


89 


10.06 


2-53 

c 

4  34 


3  32 

c 

c 
1.84 

c 

6.97 


0.15 

4 
0.34 


0.29 

5 
0.13 


0.16 


5.46 

c 

1.62 


0.44 
0.13 


13.94 

0 

6.12 

9.04 

] 
8.0s 

3 
6.65 

I 
564 

2 
7.36 

2 
10.32 

I 
6.19 


5.42 
3 
316 


0,65 

2 

2.76 

1. 91 

'3.65 


5-39 

I 
3.00 

c 
2.87 

c 

6.62 

I 

5.78 

I 

7.48 

0 

6.92 

8.67 


0.62 
7 

0.76 
I 
1. 13 


0.76 


11.80 


9.19 

8.5: 
14.30 


9-39 

2 

10.50 


1.90 
2.69 

3 

2.41 
2 

1.54 

'2.78 
2 

4.28 
3 

2. Si 

;s.36 

'3-96 

3 

,5-69 

3 

2.S9 

2.31 


3-93 
3.05 

5-75 
4 

3.47 
c 

4.85 

2 

5-37 

2.85' 

I 

3-74 

7io 

I 
9-8i 


7-04 
0.68 


0.65 


o.6q 
2.5] 
•77 
1.84 
[.65 

1-23 


10.80 

4 

9-77 


5-55^ 
7-44'' 


900 

10. 3S^ 


11.60 

5 

7-02 


6.68 

3 
4.12 

'3-2S 
i 

4.19 
3 

3-39 

'3.6, 

3 

5-47 


91 


77 


9.48 


3-76 


7.16 


1.62 


3-o; 

c 

4.10 

2 

6  08 

7-58' 


0-43 
3 
2-39 


0.54 


•59 


1.72 


0.17 


0.15 


S-oo 
8.03 
6.00 
7^77^ 

6.89' 
4 

9.12 
4 

5.18 

1 

10.91 

9.90 

( 

13^70 

7 

8.94 
3 

9.52 


5.08 


2-39 
4.92 

3 

3-6i 
7 
2.79 

V87 
J 

'4.76 
i 

1.72 
[ 

6. SI 

6.68 
7-39 

376 
2 

4-73 
2 

Q.OS 


66 


0.87 
^0.48 


77 


0.42 


0.61 


90 


.61 


.58 


0.45 
) 
1.19 

'0.31 

0.95 

'..05 
3 

0.24 
[ 

1.46 

0.63 


In  this  table,  the  first  figure  in  each  column  is  the  per- 
cent of  caesuras  of  all  kinds  which  fall  after  that  particular 
syllable.  The  second  figure  in  each  column  is  the  percent 
of  caesuras  which,  after  the  ist,  2d,  and  3d  syllables,  come 
after  a  run-on  line,  and  after  the  7th,  8th,  and  9th  syllables, 
come  in  a  run-on  line.  For  example,  in  Milton,  the  caesuras 
after  the  ist  S3dlable  number  1.00%,  of  which  nearly  half 
are  'run-on';  the  caesuras  after  the  8th  syllable  number 
9.48%,  of  which  about  seven-ninths  are  'run-on.'  The 
divisor  for  both  sets  of  figures  is  the  total  number  of 
caesuras.     (See  the  2d  column  of  Table  V.) 

58 


C^SURAS 

We  come  now  to  the  most  important  relation  of 
csesuras  to  line-rhythm — their  use  in  connection  with 
run-on  lines.  Caesuras  near  the  ends  of  the  line 
are  likely  to  be  more  emphatic  than  others,  as  we 
have  seen,  because  of  their  relatively  unusual  posi- 
tion. These  caesuras  become  vastly  more  emphatic 
when  they  come  near  the  end  of  a  run-on  line,  or 
at  the  beginning-  of  a  line  which  follows  a  run-on 
line.  Run-on  lines  in  which  the  caesura  is  either 
unmarked  by  punctuation  or  falls  after  the  4th,  5th, 
or  6th  syllable  number  about  one-half  of  the  total 
run-on  lines  in  nine  of  the  men — Milton,  Surrey, 
Thomson,  Cowper,  Keats,  Shelley,  Wordsworth, 
Browning,  and  Tennyson.  In  five — Gascoigne, 
Akenside,  Blair,  Mallet,  and  Somervile — consider- 
ably more  than  one-half  are  of  this  kind ;  in  the 
other  five — Glover,  Young,  Landor,  Arnold,  and 
Swinburne — considerably  under  one-half.  That  is, 
to  put  the  matter  from  the  opposite  point  of  view, 
in  Gascoigne  and  four  minor  i8th  century  men,  only 
about  one-third  or  less  of  the  run-on  lines  have  their 
use  emphasized  by  coming  before  pauses  in  the  first 
three  places  or  after  pauses  in  the  last  three.  In 
nine  men,  including  most  of  the  big  ones,  about 
one-half  of  the  run-on  lines  are  used  in  connection 
with  these  emphatic  caesuras.  As  for  the  other  five 
— a  curious  list — in  Glover  and  Young,  two-thirds, 
and  in  Landor,  Arnold,  and  Swinburne  about  three- 
fourths  of  the  run-on  lines  are  so  used. 

The  relation  of  these  emphatic  caesuras  to  the 
others  is  also  important.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
only  six  men — Swinburne,  Arnold,  Browning,  Lan- 
dor, Tennyson,  and  Wordsworth — have  under  50% 
of  their  caesuras  after  the  4th,  5th,  and  6th  syllables  ; 
and  that  the  others  have  in  those  middle  places  from 
S4  to  73%.  Of  those  six  men  who  have  more  than 
half  their  caesuras  at  the  six  end  places  in  the  line, 

59 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

three — Landor,  Arnold,  and  Swinburne — are  the 
men  who  have  three-fourths  of  their  run-on  lines 
in  connection  with  these  emphatic  caesuras. 

The  table  of  caesuras  in  or  after  run-on  lines 
shows  several  interesting  things,  some  of  them  sig- 
'  nificant.  In  only  Milton  and  Arnold  is  the  sum  of 
I,  2,  3  about  the  same  as  the  sum  of  7,  8,  9;  in  all 
the  others  the  sum  of  7,  8,  9,  is  distinctly  the  larger. 
In  Blair  and  Keats  the  sum  of  7,  8,  9  is  almost  twice 
that  of  I,  2,  3 ;  and  in  five  others — Young,  Thomson, 
Akenside,  Glover,  and  Swinburne — the  sum  of  7,  8, 
9,  is  more  than  twice  the  sum  of  i,  2,  3.  Obviously 
the  poets  have  found  it  easier,  or  have  thought  it 
more  effective  to  run-on  a  line  after  the  last  few 
syllables  than  to  run  it  on  only  a  few  syllables  into 
the  next.  This  conclusion  grows  even  more  obvious 
when  we  compare  these  figures  for  what  I  may  call 
'run-on'  caesuras  with  the  total  number  of  caesuras 
after  i,  2,  and  3,  and  7,  8,  and  9.  Of  these  total 
caesuras,  ten  men  have  more  after  i,  2,  and  3  than 
after  7,  8,  and  9,  six  of  them — Surrey,  Gascoigne, 
Thomson,  Keats,  Arnold,  and  Tennyson — consid- 
erably more ;  and  yet  all  but  Milton  and  Arnold  have 
a  marked  excess  of  *run-on'  caesuras  after  7,  8, 
and  9.  To  be  sure,  Akenside,  Glover,  and  Swin- 
burne, who  have  the  greatest  excess  of  total  caesuras 
after  7,  8,  and  9,  are  among  the  seven  who  have  the 
most  *run-on'  caesuras  after  7,  8,  and  9;  but  the 
other  four — Blair,  Thomson,  Young,  and  Keats — 
have  more  total  caesuras  after  i,  2,  and  3,  than  after 
7,  8,  and  9. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  our  nineteen  poets 
agreed  in  having  fewer  caesuras  after  the  9th  syllable 
than  elsewhere;  only  six  of  them — Blair,  Landor, 
Keats,  Wordsworth,  Arnold,  and  Swinburne — have 
fewer  'run-on'  caesuras  after  the  9th  syllable  than 
after  the  ist;  Surrey,  Gascoigne,  and  Akenside  have 

60 


C^SURAS 

about  the  same  in  both  places;  the  remaining  ten 
have  more  after  the  9th  syllable  than  after  the  ist. 
Of  Milton,  Professor  Saintsbury  once  wrote  ("Eliz. 
Lit.,"  327)  :  "No  device  that  is  possible  within  his 
limits — even  to  that  most  dangerous  one  of  the 
pause  after  the  first  syllable  of  a  line  which  has  *en- 
jambed'  from  the  preceding  one — is  strange  to  him, 
or  sparingly  used,  or  used  without  success."  The 
'success'  of  Alilton's  use  of  this  device  will  be 
readily  granted;  as  to  the  'sparingly,'  the  first  ten 
men  chronologically  have  fewer  of  these  pauses  than 
Milton,  although  Surrey  and  Thomson  have  almost 
as  many ;  but  all  of  the  19th  century  men,  including 
Landor,  have  more  than  Milton, — Landor,  Words- 
worth, and  Arnold  more  than  twice  as  many,  and 
Swinburne  almost  nine  times  as  many. 

The  tendency  to  run-on  the  line  from  a  caesura 
near  the  end  is  made  plain  if  we  look  at  the  matter 
from  a  slightly  different  angle.  Of  the  caesuras  after 
the  1st  syllable,  Swinburne  alone  has  more  than 
half  *run-on';  of  those  after  the  2d  syllable,  only 
Milton  and  Shelley  have  more  than  half  'run-on'; 
and  of  those  after  the  3d  syllable,  only  seven  men 
have  more  than  half  'run-on.'  But,  of  the  caesuras 
after  the  7th,  8th,  and  9th  syllables,  eleven,  twelve, 
and  nine  men  respectively  have  more  than  half  in 
run-on  lines. 

Since  the  pause  after  the  7th  syllable  is,  on  the 
average,  the  most  frequently  used  of  the  six  minor 
ones,  it  is  not  surprising  that  fourteen  of  the  men — 
all  but  Surrey,  Somervile,  Young,  Arnold,  and 
Tennyson — ^have  more  'run-on'  caesuras  after  the 
7th  syllable  than  elsewhere.  Eight  of  them  show 
a  striking  preference  for  this  'run-on'  caesura; 
Blair,  Cowper,  Landor,  Shelley,  and  Swinburne  have 
twice  as  many  as  elsewhere ;  Keats  has  three  times 
as  many  as  after  the  2d  or  3d  syllables ;  Glover  nearly 

61 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

three  times  as  many  as  after  the  8th ;  and  Akenside 
more  than  three  times  as  many  as  after  the  3rd 
syllable. 

In  blank  verse,  the  percentages  of  'rim-on' 
C3esuras  after  the  ist,  2d,  8th,  and  9th  syllables  are 
16.16,  33.84,  55.33,  and  44.08.  For  the  18,000  Hnes 
of  heroic  couplets  the  corresponding  percentages 
are  6.12,  22.38,  37.39,  and  51.72.  Even  after  we 
have  allowed  for  the  fact  that  run-on  lines  average 
only  about  half  as  many  in  couplets  as  in  blank  verse, 
we  find  that  here  again  is  emphasized  in  a  minor  de- 
tail the  technical  'shackle'  of  rhyme,  for  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  line  the  couplets  fall  considerably 
below  blank  verse  in  their  use  of  *run-on'  caesuras, 
and  approximate  it  at  the  end  of  the  line.  In  blank 
verse,  the  caesuras  near  either  the  beginning  or  the 
end  of  the  line  tend  to  modify  the  line-rhythm,  al- 
though (as  we  may  see  from  the  percentages  just 
given)  this  modification  comes  more  easily — or  at 
least  more  often — near  the  end  of  the  line.  In  the 
couplet,  a  'run-on'  caesura  near  the  beginning  of 
the  line  not  only  tends  to  reduce  the  emphasis  of  the 
first  rhyme-syllable,  but  thereby  lessens  the  effect  of 
the  second  one,  as  in : 

He  ceas'd;  but  left  so  pleasing  on  their  ear 

His  voice,  that  list'ning  still  they  seem'd  to  hear. 

(Pope:  Odys.  13.  i) 

'Rurfc-on'  caesuras  near  the  end  of  the  line,  on  the 
contrary,  bring  the  rhyme-syllables  somewhat  closer 
together,  and  thus  re-enforce  the  effect  of  the  second 
one,  as  in : 

Not  always  actions  show  the  man;  we  find 
Who  does  a  kindness  is  not  therefore  kind 

(Pope:  Moral  Ess.,  Ep.  i) 
or 

'T  is  with  our  judgments  as  our  watches, — none 
Go  just  alike,  yet  each  believes  his  own. 

(Pope:  Ess.  on  Crit.  i) 

62 


\ 


C^SURAS 


This  effect  is  not  entirely  lost  even  where  the  second 
line  has  a  caesura  near  the  beginning,  as  in : 

Yet  while  my  Hector  still  survives,  I  see 
My  father,  mother,  brethren,  all,  in  thee. 

(Pope:  II.  6.  544-) 

The  tendency  of  both  blank  verse  and  couplets  to 
have  more  marked  caesuras  near  the  end  of  the  line 
than  at  the  beginning  is  not  an  evidence  of  similarity 
but  of  difference,  for  in  blank  verse  these  caesuras 
modify  line-rhythm,  in  the  couplet  they  increase 
rhyme-emphasis. 


63 


III.     FEET 

In  the  course  of  this  discussion  it  has  often  been 
assumed  that  Hnes  of  verse  are  divided  into  feet  and 
that  those  feet  are  iambic.  It  is  now  necessary  to 
take  up  in  some  detail  the  question  of  feet,  their 
varieties,  and  the  conventions  of  their  use  in  non- 
dramatic  blank  verse.  As  a  basis  for  the  discussion, 
it  is  well  to  begin  with  what  seem  to  me  principles 
so  fundamental  as  to  be  axiomatic,  but  which  we 
do  not  always  have  clearly  in  mind.  The  whole 
question  of  feet  in  iambic  verse  has  long  been 
clouded  by  anxious  and  sometimes  belligerent  dis- 
cussion as  to  how  we  are  to  scan  certain  lines.  It 
happens  that  many  of  these  queer  lines,  though  not 
all,  are  taken  from  the  drama,  where,  I  maintain, 
dramatic  requirements  subordinate,  or  modify,  or 
sometimes  even  destroy  the  verse  pattern.^  More- 
over, the  distinctly  puzzling  lines  are  relatively  few, 
and  may  be  owing  to  one  or  more  of  half  a  dozen 
things  which  do  not  involve  fundamental  principles 
of  verse-structure.  For  one  thing,  they  may  be, 
according  to  their  context,  carelessnesses,  to  be  ex- 

1  It  has  been  suggested  by  a  friend  that  the  drama 
ought  to  be  the  best  place  to  study  blank  verse,  be- 
cause the  very  fact  that  the  poet  is  concerned  primarily 
with  the  demands  of  the  drama  should  leave  his  verse 
less  modified  by  his  probably  inadequate  theories  of 
what  blank  verse  ought  to  be.  This  idea  sounds 
plausible  and  suggestive,  but  it  seems  to  me  untenable 
simply  because,  as  even  Shakspere  shows,  in  proportion 
as  the  dramatist  becomes  interested  in  his  play,  his 
blank  verse  tends  to  lose  most  of  the  things  which 
make  it  unmistakably  verse. 

64 


FEET 

plained  by  saying  that  the  poet  was  so  governed  by 
the  swing  of  his  metre  that  he  forced  into  it  sets  of 
syllables  which  do  not  readily  justify  their  arrange- 
ment to  all  his  readers.  Or,  they  may  be  deliber- 
ate discords;  or,  again,  experiments  which  to  some 
of  us  are  regrettable  failures,  to  others  triumphs 
of  technical  skill.  In  any  case,  however,  these  lines 
are  exceptional,  so  exceptional  that  we  shall  scarcely 
profit  by  looking  for  rules  comprehensive  enough  to 
include  them  all,  especially  when  we  recall  that 
"poetic  license" — that  is,  the  liberty  to  ignore  a  rule 
on  occasion — has  been  a  recognized,  though  ill-de- 
fined, privilege  of  the  poet  ever  since  blank  verse 
came  into  use  in  England.  I  am  sure  that  in  many 
a  case  the  poet  would  either  have  us  "ask  the  Brown- 
ing Society,"  or  say  bluntly,  "I  chose  to  do  it  that 
way." 

The  lines  which  would  fairly  come  under  one  or 
other  of  these  explanations  form  the  irreducible  resi- 
duum which  is  inevitable  in  any  product  of  fallible 
human  effort.  But  a  great  many  lines  which  are 
puzzling  at  first  glance,  explain  themselves,  if  we 
can  get  at  the  simple  underlying  principle,  too  often 
hidden  by  its  Protean  manifestations.  It  will  help 
us  at  the  outset  to  recall  some  of  the  things  common 
to  poetry  and  prose. 

To  begin  with,  I  suppose  it  will  be  granted  that 
the  ultimate  secret  of  effectiveness  in  prose  Hes  in 
the  proper  distribution  of  emphasis,  and  that  the 
various  rules  of  rhetoric  are  only  specific  applications 
of  the  general  principle.  Inasmuch  as  good  poetry 
is  also  effective  composition,  it  would  be  strange  if 
the  laws  of  its  effectiveness  were  not  also  in  some 
wise  dependent  on  the  proper  distribution  of  em- 
phasis. To  be  sure,  poetry  has  methods  and  effects 
which  are  peculiarly  its  own,  and  it  is  interesting 
to  see  how  these  modify,  and  are  modified  by,  the 

65 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

ordinary   laws   of  rhetoric;   but   just  now  we  are 
looking  for  points  of  resemblance. 

Blank  verse,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  like  prose 
in  that  its  sentence  length  and  paragraph  length  are 
not  definitely  affected  by  the  structure  of  the  verse. 
Moreover,  even  a  cursory  reading  shows  us  that 
Wordsworth  and  Tennyson  and  Matthew  Arnold, 
for  example,  have  not  found  it  necessary  to  use  a 
syntax  that  is  materially  different  from  that  of  the 
prose  of  their  time.  In  prose,  a  persistent  clinging 
to  the  normal  order  in  sentence  after  sentence  is 
monotonous,  and  therefore  inexperienced  writers  en- 
deavor to  change  this  normal  order  for  the  sake  of 
variety.  The  experienced  craftsman,  however,  finds 
that  any  variation  from  the  normal  order  or  syntax 
attracts  attention,  and  that  unless  the  emphasis  so 
gained  is  justified,  there  is  an  actual  loss.  In  short, 
the  practised  writer  of  prose  avails  himself  of  the 
conspicuousness  of  variation  from  the  normal  sen- 
tence in  order  to  get  the  desired  emphasis.  The  in- 
stances cited  by  Professor  J.  W.  Bright^  of  ex- 
traordinary pronunciations  (w«-governed,  pr e-cist\y, 
/c-rusalem,  and  re-markable)  are  exactly  cases  in 
point.  The  ordinary,  normal  pronunciation  fails  en- 
tirely to  give  them  the  emphasis  desired,  so  the  re- 
sort is  at  once  to  a  variation  from  the  normal,  violent 
and  marked  in  proportion  to  the  need  for  emphasis, 
and  justified  by  that  need,^ 

1  "Proper  Names  in  Old  English  Verse,"  in  Proc. 
M.  L.  A.,  XIV,  347-68. 

2  Professor  J.  B.  Mayor,  in  his  "Chapters  on  English 
Metre,"  2d  ed.,  p.  219,  says:  "The  typical  or  standard 
line  of  each  pure  metre  consists  of  so  many  perfectly 
regular  feet  with  a  marked  pause  at  the  end  of  the 
line,  but  with  no  other  pause,  at  least  none  of  such  a 
nature  as  to  clash  with  the  metre  by  dividing  the  feet. 
Since  a  series  of  such  typical  lines  would  be  found 
intolerably    monotonous,    the    skill    of   the    versifier    is 

•66 


FEET 

In  the  order  of  the  words  of  its  sentences,  also, 
the  best  blank  verse  of  the  past  century  does  not 
differ  from  the  best  prose.  Milton's  verse  is  the  only 
obstacle  to  making  my  statement  general,  but  even 
Milton  is  only  an  apparent  exception,  for  his  speech 
was  not  deliberately  perverted  to  fit  his  verse,  but 
was  the  natural,  unaffected  expression  of  the  man 
who  had  for  so  many  busy  years  been  Latin  secre- 
tary to  Cromwell.  Precisely  in  this  fact  do  we  find 
the  reason  why  Milton's  verse,  which  sounds  so  easy 
and  natural,  has  not  been  successfully  imitated,  for 
to  no  Englishman  but  Milton  has  Milton's  speech 
been  really  native.  In  short,  all  our  good  blank 
verse  is  like  good  prose  in  its  syntax  and  its  word- 
order. 

Blank  verse  is  unlike  prose  in  that,  in  addition  to 
the  larger  and  irregular  rhythms  found  in  serious 
and  elevated  speech,  it  has  a  regular  rhythm  of  foot 
and  line.  The  foot  rhythm  is  filled  normally  by  an 
unstressed  syllable  followed  by  a  stressed  one,  and 
as  a  rule  the  word-accents  and  the  metrical  accents 
coincide.  Obviously,  a  long  succession  of  such  feet 
would  be  as  monotonous  as  a  succession  of  sentences 

shown  by  the  manner  in  which  he  reconciles  freedom 
with  law — i.e.,  by  the  amount  of  variety  he  is  able 
to  introduce  without  destroying  the  general  rhythmical 
effect."  That  he  does  not  mean  that  variety  is  sought 
by  the  poet  for  its  own  sake,  is  shown  by  his  state- 
ment on  page  i8.  apropos  of  caesural  pauses  near  the 
ends  of  the  verse,  that  "the  very  fact  that  such  a 
rhythm  is  usually  avoided  makes  it  all  the  more  effec- 
tive, when  the  word  so  isolated  is  felt  to  be  weighty 
enough  to  justify  its  position."  One  of  his  quotations 
from  Swinburne  will  show  its  ineffectiveness  when  un- 
justified: 

Pride,    from    profoundest  humbleness   of   heart 
Born,   self-uplift  at  once  and  self-subdued 
Glowed,    seeing  his    face   whose   hand   had   borne   such 
part.  (Marino  Faliero,  Dedication) 

67 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

built  on  exactly  the  same  plan.  It  seems  just  as 
obvious  that  any  marked  variation  in  the  feet  would 
attract  attention.  The  most  satisfactory  statement 
of  the  way  in  which  this  variation  comes  about  is 
that  of  Mr.  T.  S.  Omond : 

''If  periods  constitute  rhythm,  they  must  do  so  by 
uniform  succession.  Syllables  do  not  supply  this 
absolute  recurrence;  their  order  of  succession  is 
changeful,  capricious.  They  need  to  be  contrasted 
\  with  underlying  uniformity.  That  substratum  seems 
\afforded  by  time.  Isochronous  periods  form  the 
units  of  metre.  Syllabic  variation  gets  its  whole 
force  from  contrast  with  these,  is  conceivable  only  in 
relation  to  these."     ("Study  of  Metre,"  4.) 

"Syllables  exist  before  verse  handles  them,  and 
are  not  wholly  amenable  to  its  handling.  They  can- 
not be  coaxed  to  keep  exact  time,  and  of  course  can- 
not be  chopped  or  carved  into  fragments.  From 
this  very  inability,  poets  in  their  unconscious  inspira- 
tion draw  beauty.  They  delight  us  by  maintaining 
va  continual  slight  conflict  between  syllables  and  time. 
It  must  not  go  too  far,  or  the  sense  of  rhythm  per- 
ishes, and  the  line  becomes  heavy,  inert,  prosy.  But 
within  limits  the  contest  is  unceasing."  ("Metrical 
Rhythm,"  21.) 

"Accentual  scansionists  nearly  always  minimise 
the  difference  between  verse  and  prose.  For,  taking 
English  syllables  by  themselves,  there  is  really  no 
difference.  The  difference — a  real  and  true  one — 
lies  in  the  setting.  Verse  sets  syllables  to  equal  time- 
measures,  prose  to  unequal."     (lb.  24.)^ 

The  important  point  here  is  that  just  because  syl- 
lables "cannot  be  coaxed  to  keep  exact  time,"  the 

1  For  a  more  recent  discussion  than  Mr.  Omond's, 
and  an  equally  admirable  one,  see  Chapters  IV  and  V 
of  Professor  Raymond  M.  Alden's  "Introduction  to 
Poetry,"  New  York,  1909. 

68 


FEET 

time  is  more  or  less  completely  filled  by  syllables. 
Let  us  apply  this  to  blank  verse,  and  see  how  it  helps 
us  to  understand  some  details  better  than  we  have 
understood  them.  Even  the  ten  syllables  which  go 
to  make  up  the  ordinary  heroic  line  vary  in  their 
importance  so  much  that  more  than  one  prosodist 
has  tried  to  indicate  their  varying  weight  by  mark- 
ing them  o,  I,  2.  It  is  easy  to  find  lines  in  which 
beyond  doubt  the  five  even,  syllables  carry  both 
metrical  and  logical  stress,  and  yet  one  line  moves 
quickly,  another  slowly,  and  although  in  both  the 
five  stressed  syllables  are  indubitably  stressed,  the 
stresses  are  not  all  of  equal  weight.  We  have,  there- 
fore, even  in  perfectly  regular  lines,  as  Mr.  Omond 
says,  "a  continual  slight  conflict  between  syllables 
and  time."  From  the  standpoint  of  rhetoric,  these 
slight  variations  in  the  weight  of  syllables  furnish\ 
one  of  the  most  important  and  most  delicate  ways/ 
of  securing  the  nicest  distribution  of  emphasis. 

The  simplest  variation  from  the  normal  line  con- 
sists in  the  substitution  of  a  trisyllabic  foot — the 
slipping  in  of  an  extra,  unstressed  syllable.  In  some 
generations  (notably  in  the  i8th  century)  this  extra 
syllable  was  elided  and  indicated  by  an  apostrophe, 
although  "apostrophation,"  as  Professor  Saintsbury 
contemptuously  calls  it,  was  protested  against  at 
least  two  hundred  years  ago.^  In  many  cases  we 
cannot  say  positively  that  the  apparent  extra  syllable 
is  not  slurred  or  elided,  for  it  constantly  happens 

1  In  1709,  Dr.  Wm.  Coward  wrote,  in  his  "Poetica 
Licentia  discuss'd" :  "I  am  of  opinion  that  Dactyls  and 
other  Feet,  as  Anapests,  etc.,  ought  to  be  allow'd  in 
English  Metre,  though  Mr.  Dryden  restrains  all  to 
Dissyllables.  For  it's  very  plain,  that  none  please  the 
Fancy  that  offend  the  Ear  (as  the  Dispensarian  Poet 
says).  And  the  Words,  Delicate,  Moderate,  Crucible, 
Generous,  run  much  better  than  DeVcate,  Mod'rate, 
Cruc'ble,  Gen'rous,  to  make  'em  English  Spondees." 

69 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

that  our  knowledge  of  sow  such  words  as  "ghmmer- 
ing"  or  ''several"  are  spelled  leads  us  to  think  of 
them  as  having  three  syllables,  when  likely  enough 
we  pronounce  only  two,  or  two  and  a  fraction — for 
both  the  semi-vocalic  liquids  and  what  the  phone- 
ticians call  the  *'on-glide"  contribute  delicately  but 
perceptibly  to  "fill  the  time."  (To  many  people, 
"flower,"  for  example,  looks  like  two  syllables,  but 
"flour"  like  only  one;  so  with  "higher"  and  "hire.") 
These  trisyllabic  feet  are  usually  called  anapests  or 
dactyls,  and  although  Mr.  Omond  recognises  clearly 
that  the  three  syllables  are  read  in  what  he  calls 
"duple  time,"  I  do  not  think  that  any  one  has  hitherto 
pointed  out  that  these  anapests  which  we  find  in 
blank  verse  are  nearly  always  of  a  kind  not  charac- 
teristic of  triple  time  measures.  A  standard  anan 
pestic  line  is  Byron's 

The   Assyrian   came   down   like   the   wolf  on   the   fold. 

If  we  compare  this  with  Tennyson's 

Myriads  of  rivulets  hurrying  thro'  the  lawn, 

The  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial  elms, 

And  murmuring  of  innumerable  bees        (Princess,  VII) 

we  see  that  in  Tennyson's  lines  the  two  unstressed 
syllables  are  of  unequal  weight,  that  one  of  them  is 
almost  negligible  in  pronunciation,  whereas  in  By- 
ron's line  the  two  unstressed  syllables  are  clear  and 
distinct,  and  approximately  equal  in  value,  f  Byron 
even  crowds  in  or  slurs  a  third  unstressed  syllable 
in  /rian  came  down/.)  It  makes  no  material  dif- 
ference in  the  effect  of  Tennyson's  lines  whether 
you  practically  elide  the  lighter  syllables,  or  merely 
pronounce  them  rapidly — in  either  case  the  passage 
gets  its  desired  effect  of  hurry.  Writers  of  non- 
dramatic  blank  verse  have  confined  their  trisyllabic 
feet  to  this  particular  type  of  anapest,  which  it  may 

70 


FEET 

be  worth  while  to  call  a  'duple  time'  anapest.  Of 
course  there  are  instances  of  the  full  three  syllables, 
but  I  know  of  no  writer  of  blank  verse  who  does 
not  in  the  main  observe  this  convention.^ 

'Duple  time'  anapests,  then,  though  frequent,  arj^  >/ 
as  a  rule  not  sought  for,  but  merely  not  avoided-/^ 
cases  like  "amorous/'  "delicate,"  and  the  like,  where 
it  is  easier  to  slip  in  the  extra  syllable  than,  to  change 
the  word  or  the  rhythm.  The  proportion  of  such 
substitutions,  I  feel  pretty  sure,  is  about  what  might 
be  expected  of  poets  who  neither  seek  variety  for 
its  own  sake,  nor  avoid  it  when  it  offers  naturally. 
Such  passages  as  the  three  lines  from  Tennyson  ■. 
quoted  above,  where  we  are  sure  both  of  the  artful- 
ness and  of  the  effectiveness,  are  exceptional.  In 
passages  where  the  movement  of  the  thought  is  slow, 
anapests  are  likely  to  be  few ;  where  the  thought 
or  the-  mood  is  light  and  rapid,  anapests  are  likely 
to  come  of  themselves,  though  not  to  so  great  an 
extent  as  one  might  think,  for  the  reason  that  a 
trisyllabic  foot  is  only  one  of  many  ways  of  securing 
rapidity  of  movement. 

Inasmuch  as  anapests  do  not  involve  any  shift 
of  accent,  trochees,  which  do,  seem  therefore  more 
marked  variations  from  the  normal  iambus.  When  . 
the  trochee  comes  at  the  beginning  of  the  line,  how-.^ 
ever,  it  does  not  break  the  swing  of  the  verse  verW 
much,  for  the  almost  unavoidable  pause  at  the  enci 
of  the  preceding  line  keeps  the  two  stresses  from 

1  Coleridge's  anapestic  substitutions  in  iambics  oc- 
curred, it  will  be  remembered,  not  in  blank  verse,  but 
in  four-beat  couplets.  But  the  anapests  of  Christahel 
are,  to  my  ear,  in  triple  time,  and  the  dissyllabic  feet 
(even  the  occasional  monosyllabic  ones)  are  not  iambs 
but  "slowed"  anapests.  Therefore  I  suspect  that  the 
practical  limitation  of  blank  verse  to  "duple  time"  ana- 
pests is  not  merely  a  convention,  but  a  fundamental 
necessity. 

71 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

coming  abruptly  together.^  For  this  reason  trochees 
in  the  first  foot  are  much  more  numerous  than  those 
in  all  the  other  places  put  together.  Many  dissyl- 
lables, such  as  present  participles,  when  they  come 
at  the  beginning  of  the  line,  are  obviously  trochaic. 
But  many  other  possible  trochees  may  just  as  rea- 
sonably be  slightly  stressed  iambs,  or  so  neutral 
that  we  say  they  have  'hovering'  or  'distributed'  ac- 
cent, or  occasionally  they  may  even  be  spondees — 
according  to  how  the  reader  chooses  to  distribute  the 
emphasis.  These  recognisable  gradations  between 
obvious  trochees  and  obvious  iambs  are  just  like  the 
differences  already  pointed  out  in  regular  iambs — 
they  are  delicate  adjustments  of  syllables  to  an  ar- 
bitrary rhythm.  These  adjustments,  it  may  be  re- 
marked, are  so  delicate  that  attempts  to  tabulate 

1 1  assume  the  most  severe  condition — a  trochee  fol- 
lowing a  run-on  line  in  which  the  final  syllable  is  clearly- 
stressed,  as  in: 

with  notice  of  a  hart 

Taller  than  all  his  fellows  (Marriage  of  Geraint,  149!) 
or 

his  quick  instinctive  hand 

Caught  at  the  hilt.  (lb.  209-10) 

On  the  other  hand,  where  the  preceding  line  is  stopt,  as  in : 
As  slopes  a  wild  brook  o'er  a  little  stone, 
Running  too  vehemently  to  break  upon  it  (lb.  77-8) 

or  where  it  ends  in  an  unstressed  or  feminine  ending,  as  in : 

and  in  April   suddenly 

Breaks  from  a  coppice  (lb.  338-9) 

or, 

and  I  see  her 

Weeping  for  some  gay  knight  in  Arthur's  hall      (117-8) 

an  initial  trochee  can  hardly  be  said  to  break  the  swing 
of  the  rhythm  at  all.  Initial  trochees  after  stopt  lines 
are,  I  think,  most  common. 

72 


FEET 

them  result  chiefly  in  recording  the  reader's  elocu- 
tion.^ 

Trochees  in  iambic  verse  are  essentially  casei 
where  the  logical  and  metrical  stresses  do  not  coini 
cide,  and,  especially  after  the  first  foot,  are  sure  tp 
attract  attention  just  because  they  result  in  striking 
variations  from  the  normal  rhythm  or  from  the 
normal  pronunciation.  In  such  cases,  words  and 
rhythm  clash,  and  one  must  yield,  or  at  least  be 
modified  by  the  other.  As  a  rule  the  metrical  accent 
yields,  because  the  break  in  the  swing  of  the  verse 
fits  the  sense,  as  in 

The  prince's  blood/spirted/upon  his  scarf 

(Marriage  of  Geraint) 

or 

Long  lines  of  cliff/breaking/have  left  a  chasm 

(Enoch  Arden) 


or 


1  In  one  of  his  "Chapters  on  English  Metre"  (2d  ed., 
pp.  I57f.),  Professor  J.  B.  Mayor  takes  up  Surrey's 
blank  verse,  and  in  contradiction  to  J.  A,  Symonds,  who 
thought  Surrey  averse  "to  any  departure  from  iambic 
regularity,"  thinks  his  verse  full  of  trochees.  For  my- 
self, I  think  Symonds  right  and  Professor  Mayor 
wrong,  for  I  am  as  much  impressed  by  the  dominance 
of  the  metrical  rhythm  in  Surrey  as  I  am  by  its  subor- 
dination in  the  plays  of  Shakspere's  last  period.  But 
the  important  thing  here  is  not  which  of  the  two  critics 
is  right;  it  is  that  the  balance  between  the  syllables  and 
the  rhythm  is  so  uncertain  that  acute  and  candid  critics 
find  in  it  a  basis  for  radical  disagreement.  I  am  quite 
sure  that  I  am  confessing  neither  conceit  nor  eccentri- 
city but  only  a  common  experience,  when  I  say  that 
I  have  never  yet  seen  a  page  of  verse  scanned  exactly 
as  I  should  scan  it.  The  truth  is  that  this  very  pos- 
sibility of  giving  even  the  trifling  details  of  the  melody 
an  individual  interpretation  that  makes  them  peculiarly 
our  own,  is  one  of  the  charms  of  verse  made  possible 
by  the  "continual  slight  conflict  between  syllables  and 
time." 


73 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Sang,  and  the  sand/danced  at/the  bottom  of  it. 

(Balin  &  Balan) 

It  has  been  contended,  notably  by  Professor  J.  W. 
Bright,  that  we  do  not  find  trochees  in  iambic  verse 
except  at  the  beginning  cf  the  hne  or  after  a  pause. 
What  such  prosodists  would  do  with  lines  like  these 
I  do  not  know;  to  scan  'spirit^(i'  or  'danced  af 
seems  to  me  preposterous/ 

/  Instances  in  which  the  metrical  accent  seems  to 
(dominate,  and  the  word  accent  to  yield,  are  relatively 
not  numerous,  and  are  important  mainly  because 
they  give  rise  to  misconceptions.  These  instances,  so 
far  as  I  have  observed,  are  of  two  kinds  only.  In 
the  first  kind  the  metre  does  not  really  dominate,  but 
only  appears  to  do  so  to  modern  readers.  I  mean  in- 
stances in  which  words  have  changed  their  accent, 
as  in  Shakspere.  These  instances  call  for  mention 
here  only  because  to  our  ears  there  is  a  clash  between 
the  word  and  the  rhythm,  in  which  the  rhythm  wins, 
and  because  we  often  sacrifice  the  proper  emphasis 
by  ignoring  the  old  pronunciation.  A  glaring  ex- 
ample, to  my  mind,  is  Juliet's  cry 

I   have  no  joy  of  this   contract  to-night. 
It  seems  to  me  that  a  shift  of  the  metrical  stress 
to  make  it  correspond  with  the  modern  word-accent 
(as  I  have  heard  capable  actresses  recite  the  line) 
positively  spoils  the  sense.     Keep  the  rhythm  and 

1  It  is  possible  to  scan  these  lines  with  a  'rest'  before 
the  medial  trochee,  thus : 

The  prin/ce's  blood/  x  spirt/ed  upon/his  scarf, 

and  it  is  also  possible  to  maintain  that,  when  a  medial 
trochee  brings  two  stressed  syllables  together,  the 
juxtaposition  of  itself  creates  a  pause;  but  it  is  to  be 
noticed  that  the  foot  which  is  thus  made  up  of  a  rest 
and  a  stressed  syllable  is  invariably  followed  by  a 
"duple  time"  anapest.  In  non-dramatic  blank  verse,  at 
least,  I  have  found  ho  such  lines  as 

The  prince's  blood/  x  dropped/upon/his  scarf. 

74 


FEET 

joy  gets  the  emphasis  it  needs;  change  the  rhythm, 
and  contract  stands  out  in  uncalled-for  prominence. 
The  second  kind,  also  found  chiefly  in  the  older 
poets,  consists  of  lines  which  are,  to  say  the  least, 
puzzling  and  uncertain.  In  Surrey,  for  instance,  as 
already  said,  I  think  the  rhythm  dominated,  and 
therefore  that  such  lines  as 

Worship  was  done  to  Ceres  the  goddess, 
and 

Unto  the  son  of  Venus  the  goddess, 

were  meant  to  be  perfectly  regular.  (The  matter 
would  be  much  simpler  if  we  were  discussing  ballad 
measures  instead  of  blank  verse.)  I  am  not  so  cer- 
tain about 

That  now  in  Carthage  loitereth  reckless. 

There  are  a  number  of  such  lines  in  Surrey,  so  many 
that  they  point  either  to  the  dominance  of  the  rhythm 
or  else  they  are  the  result  of  deliberate  artistic  ex- 
periment. The  latter  view  is  conceivable,  although 
many  details  of  his  verse  show  him  to  have  been  a 
very  conservative  pioneer  (cf.  p.  92).  Granting, 
however,  that  these  instances  are  experiments ;  other 
poets  have  been  shy  about  following  Surrey's  lead. 
In  Milton,  Mr.  Bridges  finds  only  three  instances 
of  a  trochee  in  the  fifth  foot : 

Beyond  all  past  example  and  future  (P.  L.  x.  840) 

Of  thrones  and  mighty  seraphim  prostrate         (vi.  841; 

and  the  better  known 
Which  of  us  who  beholds  the  bright  surface. 

(P.  L.  vi.  472) 

However  Milton  intended  us  to  read  these  lines,  one 
thing  is  evident :  they  are  unusually  striking  instances 
of  the  "conflict  between  syllables  and  time.''  In  this 
very  fact,  indeed,  probably  lies  the  reason  why  such 

75 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

lines  are  few,  although  Mr.  Bridges  thinks  /suris-Ct 
"a  very  beautiful  inversion,"  In  modern  blank  verse 
I  have  noted  no  such  cases  at  all,  although  I  do  not 
doubt  that  some  may  be  found.  In  Tennyson,  very 
rarely,  we  find  a  double  trochee  at  the  end  of  the 
line,  as  in: 

Down  the  low  turret  stairs  palpitating  (Princess) 

At  least  one  critic,  I  suppose,  would  insist  upon 
scanning  /palpitating.  To  my  ear,  /palpitating  is 
less  startling  than  the  instances  just  quoted  from 
Milton,  because  the  two  trochees  together  have  much 
the  effect  of  a  feminine  ending.^ 

These  lines  from  Surrey,  Milton,  and  Tennyson 
are,  it  seems  to  me,  clear  illustrations  of  the  fact 
that  such  violent  wrenchings  of  the  word  accent  as 
/goddess  have  grown  rarer  and  rarer  in  our  blank 
verse.  The  explanation  of  the  change  is  not  merely 
that  there  has  been  growth  in  taste  or  skill,  but  that 
there  has  been  an  increasing  subordination  of  the 
rhythm.  Surrey,  I  am  sure,  set  his  words  to  rhythm, 
as  he  might  have  set  them  to  music;  Tennyson,  at 
the  other  extreme,  makes  his  rhythm  an  accompani- 
ment to  his  words. 

These  variations  from  the  normal  iambus  bear 
only  one  noticeable  relation  to  the  caesural  pause. 
Occasionally,  initial  trochees  (and  dactyls)  are  em- 
phasized by  a  caesura  after  the  2d  syllable,  or,  to 
put  it  the  other  way,  the  caesura  is  emphasized  by 
the  trochee ;  but  such  instances  are  relatively  few. 
[In  five  books  of  Paradise  Lost,  there  are  35  trochees 

1  Abbott  and  Seeley,  in  "English  Lessons,"  sec.  138, 
actually  scan  "jto-irs"  in  order  to  make  a  feminine  end- 
ing. Here,  too,  it  is  possible  to  allow  a  'rest'  after 
"stairs";  but  in  this  as  in  every  other  instance  I  can 
find,  the  'rest'  is  an  alternative  merely,  and  not  an 
indisputable  phenomenon,  as  in  "Break,  break,  break," 
and  many  other  lyrics. 

76 


FEET 

and  9  dactyls  marked  by  a  caesura — in  1.13%  of 
the  lines ;  in  the  Night  Thoughts  the  figures  are  95 
and  I,  or  0.98% ;  in  the  Prelude^  66  and  10,  or 
0.95%;  and  in  the  Idylls  175  and  13,  or  1.66%. 
The  proportion  of  caesuras  after  the  2d  syllable  em- 
phasized by  trochees  or  dactyls  ranges  from  about 
one-seventh  in  Paradise  Lost  to  about  one-fourth^ 
in  the  Idylls.  (Dactyls,  which  bear  the  same  rela-' 
tion  to  trochees  that  anapests  do  to  iambs,  in  blank 
verse  almost  never  come  after  the  first  foot,  and  are 
even  more  certain  than  anapests  to  have  one  of  the 
unstressed  syllables  very  light.) 

Since  a  trochee,  except  in  the  last  foot,  is  usually 
followed  by  an  iamb,  the  combination  x  x  may  have 
several  distinct  cadences.  The  most  common  one 
is  often  called  a  choriambus: 

The  sound    .    .    . 

-•  X  X       > 

Smote  on  her  ear.  (Geraint  and  Enid) 

But,  according  to  the  punctuation  or  the  division  of 
words,  this  arrangement  of  syllables  may  seem  to 
divide  in  one  or  two  other  ways,  for  example : 

she  saw 

>  X  X  - 

Diist,/and  the  points/of  lances  (Geraint  and  Enid) 
and 

^  X  X  ^ 

Thus— /and  not  else/.  (Gareth  and  Lynette) 

or 

--    X  X  >• 

Dyeing  it;//and/his  quick  instinctive  hand. 

(Marriage  of  Ger.) 

These  last  two  ways  give  monosyllabic  feet  as  well 
as  anapests  and  dactyls  which  seem  to  have  triple 
rather  than  duple  time.  There  is  another  possible 
monosyllabic  foot  occasionally  found  in  non-drama- 
tic blank  verse,  in  such  lines  as  Tennyson's 
Laid  widow'd  of  the  power/w/his  eye, 

77 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

or  Shakspere's  line  in  Julius  Ccesar, 

As  fivt./ drives /oni  fire,  so  pity  pity. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  instances — very  rare 
in  non-dramatic  verse — of  indubitable  syncopation, 
of  nine-syllable  lines,  with  accent  on  first  and  last 
syllables,  in  which  the  monosyllable  (at  beginning 
or  end  of  line,  as  you  choose)  is  helped  out  by  the 
line-pause.  In  these  nine-syllable  lines  there  does 
seem  to  be  something  which  corresponds  to  a  'rest' ; 
in  the  other  instances,  however,  it  is  to  be  noted 
that  the  monosyllable  is  not  left  to  take  up  the  time 
of  a  foot  either  by  itself  or  by  means  of  a  'rest,' 
but  is  compensated  for,  either  by  adjoining  trisyl- 
labic feet,  or  by  a  monosyllable  so  full  in  sound,  so 
capable  of  extension,  as  to  fill  at  least  part  of  the 
time  of  the  missing  syllable.^ 

Whatever  may  be  the  practice  in  other  measures, 
therefore,  non-dramatic  blank  verse  scrupulously 
(avoids  monosyllabic  feet  in  which  the  remaining  time 
of  the  foot  is  filled  out  by  a  'rest.'  It  is  important 
|to  notice,  in  the  instances  here  cited,  that  the  possible 
differences  of  opinion  are  not  about  what  syllables 
are  stressed  and  what  ones  unstressed,  but  only 
about  the  almost  purely  academic  question  as  to  just 
where  in  those  arrangements  of  syllables  we  are  to 
mark  the  feet.  It  is  sufficient,  I  think,  to  point  out 
that  a  simple  shift  of  accent  affords  a  considerable 
opportunity  for  delicate  adaptation  of  the  movement 
of  the  line  to  the  mood  or  feeling.^ 

1  In  the  lines  last  quoted,  the  reader  may  easily  test 
this  point  by  substituting  "strength"  for  Tennyson's 
"power,"  and  "heat"  for  Shakspere's  "fire." 

2  It  seems  hardly  necessary  to  mention  that  a  caesura 
in  the  middle  of  an  iambic  foot  may  be  considered  to 
give  the  effect  of  an  amphibrach  plus  a  monosyllable. 
Such  refinements  only  multiply  categories  without  add- 
ing to  our  understanding  of  the  situation. 

78 


FEET 

The  variations  from  the  normal  order  of  un- 
stressed plus  stressed  syllables,  which  we  have  been 
discussing,  are  among  the  ways  in  which  the  poets 
get  many  of  the  time-sequences,  or  cadences,  of 
verse.  If  these  cadences  were  solely  variations  in 
the  arrangement  of  stressed  and  unstressed  sylla- 
bles, it  would  be  possible  to  describe  and  tabulate 
them,  and  we  should  have  one  more  metrical  detail 
which  could  be  reported  upon  with  precison.  But 
these  cadences  are  also  a  result  of  the  varying  collo- 
cations of  syllables  which  not  only  differ  among 
themselves  in  weight  and  force,  but  which  in  addi- 
tion vary  according  to  their  collocation  with  other 
syllables — so  that  we  constantly  find  gradations 
which  reduce  and  sometimes  obliterate  the  distinc- 
tion between  stressed  and  unstressed  syllables. 
However,  these  cadences  are  not  peculiar  to  blank 
verse  either  in  their  character  or  their  use,  but  are 
common  to  most  English  metres  and  even  to  much 
prose — they  are  properties  of  groups  of  syllables, 
regardless  of  whether  those  groups  occur  in  prose 
or  verse.  Therefore,  in  the  present  condition  of  our 
knowledge  of  the  rhythms  of  English  speech,  I  think 
I  have  done  all  that  is  necessary  as  well  as  all  that 
is  feasible,  in  calling  attention  to  them  and  in  point- 
ing out  the  few  respects  in  which,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  their  use  in  non-dramatic  blank  verse  has  con- 
ventional limitations. 


79 


IV.     TONE-QUALITY 

One  other  matter  calls  for  discussion  here  chiefly 
because  it  is  often  and  wrongly  assumed  to  be  a 
part  of  the  technique  of  blank  verse.  In  moving  as 
we  have  in  this  study  from  the  larger,  more  tangible 
features  of  blank  verse  to  its  more  elusive,  less 
measurable  qualities,  it  may  seem  to  many  that  we 
are  at  last  getting  a  little  nearer  the  heart  of  the 
mystery.  In  one  sense  that  is  true,  for  we  are  com- 
ing to  details  which  help  to  distinguish  the  poet  from 
the  mere  versifier — but,  as  I  think,  they  are  not  pri- 
marily details  of  prosody,  although  they  may  be 
found  at  their  best  in  poetry  because  verse  is  an 
instrument  of  expression  which  encourages  the  very 
highest  skill  in  arranging  words  and  syllables  so  as 
to  convey  most  precisely  and  delicately  whatever 
shade  of  thought  or  feeling  the  writer  wishes  to 
put  on  record.  But  that  effort  toward  exact  expres- 
sion, we  need  to  remind  ourselves,  is  a  problem  of 
general  rhetoric —  a  matter  of  prose  as  well  as  of 
verse. 

The  last  refinement  of  verse,  the  highest  reach  of 
melody,  seems  to  lie  in  tone-quality.  One  of  the 
most  obvious  manifestations  of  tone-quality — rhyme 
— is  peculiar  to  verse,  but  as  we  have  seen,  is  in 
blank  verse  either  rare  and  accidental,  or  is  reduced 
to  a  merely  rhetorical  function  of  repetition.  Two 
other  phases  of  tone-quality,  alliteration  and  asso' 
nance,  have  structural  functions  in  some  verse- 
forms;  but  while  they  are  frequent  both  in  blank 
verse  and  in  prose,  they  are  not  essential  or  even 

80 


TONE-QUALITY 

invariable  components  of  either,  and  poets  and  read- 
ers alike  seem  to  agree  that  they  must  not  be  so 
obtrusive  as  to  suggest  structural  purpose. 

There  is  another  phase  of  tone-quality,  however, 
more  subtle  than  these,  and  just  as  certainly  effec- 
tive, which  is  often  called  'tone-color.'  When  first 
heard,  the  term  sounds  definite  and  self-explanatory, 
but  its  precise  content  is  difficult  to  fix,  and  it  is 
easily  confused  with  other  things.  It  is  properly 
applied,  as  sufficiently  descriptive  of  one  effect  of 
the  collocation  of  sounds,  to  that  part  of  the  total 
impression  which  we  apprehend  immediately  and 
without  analysis.  (I  am  speaking  now  of  the  pro- 
cess of  apprehension,  and  do  not  mean  to  imply  that 
tone-color  defies  analysis,  although  no  satisfactory 
studies  of  it  have  yet  appeared.)  The  collocation 
of  sounds,  it  should  be  noted,  by  facilitating  or  re- 
tarding the  utterance  of  syllables,  contributes  to, 
is  perhaps  the  main  source  of,  the  ''continual  slight 
conflict  between  syllables  and  time."  Tone-color, 
however,  although  it  does  effect  variations  in  the 
rhythm,  does  not  determine  the  time,  and  conse- 
quently is  not  a  structural  element  of  verse. 

Although  tone-color  is  present  in  varying  degrees 
in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse,  we  are  more  likely  to 
expect  or  demand  it  in  poetry,  just  because  the  man 
who  writes  in  verse  thereby  announces  an  artistic 
intention,  whereas  the  writer  in  prose  may  profess 
to  be  only  a  plain,  blunt  man,  and  no  orator.  Mr. 
Swinburne  perhaps  had  tone-color  in  mind  when 
he  declared  that  all  good  poetry  must  "sing" — surely 
he  did  not  mean  that  all  good  poetry  must  be  lyrical, 
but  only  that  it  must  have  melody.  We  have  some- 
thing of  this  sort  in  mind,  by  implication  at  least, 
when  we  discriminate  between  a  poet  and  a  versifier 
or  rhymester.  It  might  be  supposed  that  blank 
verse,   just   because   its   structure  includes   neither 

8i 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

rhyme,  assonance,  nor  alliteration,  would  either 
tempt  poets  to  enrich  it  with  some  of  the  devices 
of  tone-color,  or  would  lend  itself  especially  well 
to  the  display  of  tone-color.  So  far  as  I  have  ob- 
served, however,  tone-color,  as  an  almost  invariable 
accompaniment  of  poetry,  is  found  in  blank  verse, 
but  not  to  any  exceptional  degree.^ 

Tone-color,  then,  may  be  some  particular  charm 
of  utterance,  characteristic  of  the  individual,  like 
Chaucer's  'liquidity'  of  diction  (as  Matthew  Arnold 
called  it),  or  M^ton^s_spngrity ;  it  may  be  almost 
inseparable  from  one  or  more  other  things — for  in- 
stance, the  'happy  phrase'  involves  both  aptness  of 
idea  and  attractiveness  of  sound  (tone-color),  and  in 
the  happiest  instances  the  expression  and  the  thing 
expressed  seem  inextricably  blended.  But  it  is 
necessary  to  discriminate  carefully  between  details 
like  these  and  such  things  as  for  instance  the  dis- 
tribution of  caesuras,  which  indicate  mastery  of 
technical  details  peculiar  to  the  particular  verse- 
form — in  this  case,  blank  verse. 

^  One  use  of  the  phase  'tone-color'  might  be  seri- 
ously misleading  if  we  attempted  to  apply  it  to  blank 
verse.  The  term  is  used  in  music  as  equivalent  to 
'timbre,'  that  quality  of  sound  which  enables  us  to  tell 
one  musical  instrument  from  another.  Obviously,  blank 
verse  has  no  'timbre'  and  is  not  distinguished  from 
other  verse-forms  in  that  way.  It  would,  to  be  sure, 
hardly  be  confused  with  many  other  verse-forms,  but 
the  basis  of  discrimination  is  not  tone-color,  but  the 
tempo,  or  the  rhyme-scheme,  or  the  line-length,  or  all 
three  in  combination. 


82 


V.     SUMMARY    AND    COMMENT 

Blank  verse,  as  we  have  seen,  is  characterised,  as 
compared  with  other  verse- forms,  by  a  minimum  of  i-"^ 
requirements.  Its  positive  characteristics  are  only 
two — iambic  feet  and  five-beat  lines.  It  is  without 
rhyme  or  stanza-form,  the  first  of  which  affects 
sentence-length  and  structure,  the  second  paragraph- 
length.  Because  of  this  freedom,  it  may  take  on  a 
very  wide  range  of  rhetorical  styles  without  suffer- 
ing any  essential  change  or  suppression  of  its  struc- 
tural details.  Consequently,  the  absence  of  rhyme, 
which  is  the  most  obvious  feature  of  blank  verse, 
is  also  by  far  the  most  important  one,  for  although 
a  decided  change  in  sentence-length  or  structure 
will  affect  the  proportions  of  run-on  and  endstopt 
lines,  it  will  not  change  their  character  or  function. 
The  rhetorical  differences  between  the  blank  verse 
of  Milton  and  of  Young,  for  example,  show  metri- 
cally in  contrasting  proportions  of  run-on  lines,  and 
of  endstopt  lines,  but  do  not  change  their  character. 
In  the  couplets  of  Pope  and  Keats,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  similar  rhetorical  difference  means  similarly 
different  proportions  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines, 
but  it  also  changes  the  rhyme  from  its  structural 
function  of  marking  the  sense  to  a  decorative  one 
of  marking  the  line-rhythm.  Because  of  this  free- 
dom with  which  blank  verse  adapts  itself  to  widely 
different  rhetorical  styles,  it  can  be  used  to  express 
almost  any  mode  of  treatment  or  feeling,  without 
raising  questions  as  to  its  technical  suitability.    Com- 

83 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

pare  this  adaptability  with  the  demonstrably  limited 
range  both  of  material  and  treatment  to  which  the 
'strict'  heroic  couplet  is  suited. 

From  this  structural  flexibility  of  blank  verse  it 
happens  that  we  have  no  'formal'  or  'standard'  type 
of  blank  verse,  as  we  have,  for  example,  of  the 
'strict'  heroic  couplet.  This  strict  couplet  is  to  be 
found  in  every  generation  from  Shakspere  down, 
not  sporadically  but  constantly,  and  in  form  as 
'severe'  as  Pope's.  But  blank  verse  has  no  well-de- 
fined, clearly  recognisable  technique,  which  would 
enable  one  to  say  that  Cowper's,  for  instance,  was 
more  or  less  'correct'  than  Milton's,  or  Words- 
Iworth's  than  Tennyson's.  Again,  we  cannot  say  of 
'any  blank  verse  that  its  author  shows  remarkable 
'skill  in  bending  the  verse-form  to  serve  a  theme  or 
treatment  apparently  alien  to  its  use,  in  the  sense  in 
which  we  can  point  out  Dryden's  management  of 
the  heroic  quatrain  in  his  Annus  Mirabilis.  More- 
over we  can  rarely  assert  with  technical  exactness 
that  a  poet  has  in  his  blank  verse  revealed  hitherto 
unexpected  capabilities  of  the  form,  as  we  can  of 
Shelley's  use  of  the  Spenserian  stanza  in  the  Revolt 
of  Islam;  and  on  the  other  hand  we  cannot  often 
clearly  demonstrate  that  in  technical  respects  any 
poem  in  blank  verse  has  found  the  form  most  ex- 
quisitely adapted  to  its  expression,  as  we  can  of 
Pope's  couplets,  or  Byron's  Don  Juany  or  Tennyson's 
In  Memoriam.  For  clearly  technical  reasons — chiefly 
the  opportunity  for  dialogue  which  will  sound  like 
real  speech,  without  risking  the  oratorical  or  de- 
clamatory effect  of  the  couplet — blank  verse  is  of 
all  our  verse-forms,  the  most  exactly  suited  to  the 
drama;  but  I  doubt  if  we  can  say  of  any  non- 
dramatic  poem  that  it  ought  not  to  have  been 
written  in  blank  verse,  or  that  its  form  was  ill- 
chosen,  as  we  can  of  Owen  Meredith's  Lucile.     In 

84 


SUMMARY  AND  COMMENT 

blank  verse  the  trouble  is  almost  certain  to  be  with 
the  poet  and  not  with  his  choice  of  blank  verse. 

In  the  twenty-three  poets  we  have  studied,  the 
percentages  of  run-on  and  endstopt,  or  even  of  un- 
broken lines,  seem  accidents  of  technique  rather 
than  indications  of  treatment  or  measures  of  skill. 
For  example,  we  found  that  Philips  and  Newcomb 
were  the  men  who  used  more  run-on  Hues  than  Mil- 
ton; that  Young  used  more  endstopt  lines  than 
Pope  did  in  his  couplets ;  that  Surrey  and  Gascoigne 
had  more  unbroken  lines  than  the  rest.  In  the  coup- 
let, on  the  contrary,  the  proportions  of  'run-on'  2d 
lines  furnish  an  accurate  measure  of  'strictness'  or 
'looseness.'  ('Strictness'  and  'looseness'  I  use  here 
in  their  accepted  sense,  to  indicate  whether  the 
couplet  is  characteristically  stopped  or  free;  the 
terms  have  no  implication  now,  as  they  perhaps  had 
at  first,  of  either  praise  or  blame.)  That  is  to  say, 
these  devices  which  undoubtedly  affect  the  flexibility 
of  the  verse,  do  not  in  blank  verse  have  'standard' 
proportions  within  sufficiently  narrow  limits  either 
to  make  any  one  of  them  by  itself  a  sure  measure 
of  the  poet's  skill,  or  to  establish  'types'  of  blank 
verse.  The  reason  is  that  the  absence  of  rhyme 
makes  these  various  devices  less  emphatic  and  more 
interdependent  than  in  the  couplet.  The  caesuras, 
on  the  other  hand,  gain  in  emphasis  by  the  absence 
of  the  rhyme,  and  though  such  figures  as  could  be 
gathered  showed  that  blank  verse  does  not  tend 
much  more  than  the  couplet  to  distribute  its  caesuras, 
their  distribution  is  more  important  in  the  movement 
of  the  verse,  just  because  they  are  not  subdued  by, 
the  stronger  line-rhythm  which  the  rhyme  gives.. 
These  two  things  together — the  reduced  emphasis 
of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines,  and  the  increased 
importance  of  pauses  within  the  line — combine  to 
make  the  poet's  distribution  of  his  caesuras  the  one 

85 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

detail  which  serves  most  nearly  as  a  measure  of  his 
mastery  of  the  technique  of  blank  verse. 

In  spite  of  the  wide  field  for  individual  expression 
offered  by  blank  verse  in  the  poets  we  have  studied 
we  have  found  a  considerable  number  of  conven- 
tions, some  of  them  merely  traditional,  others  based 
on  the  limitations  of  the  form.  Unstressed  endings, 
we  saw,  were  either  avoided  or  used  very  little  by 
all  the  men  but  Browning.  The  men  who  avoided 
them  also  excluded  them  from  their  couplets  and 
looked  upon  them  as  a  defect  in  heroic  verse  whether 
it  rhymed  or  not.  They  believed  with  Dr.  Samuel 
Johnson  that  "The  music  of  the  English  heroic  line 
strikes  the  ear  so  faintly  that  it  is  easily  lost,  unless 
all  the  syllables  of  every  line  co-operate  together; 
this  co-operation  can  only  be  obtained  by  the  preser- 
vation of  every  verse  unmingled  with  another  as  a 
distinct  system  of  sounds,"  although  these  writers 
of  blank  verse  did  not  altogether  agree  with  John- 
son that  "this  distinctness  is  obtained  and  preserved 
by  the  artifice  of  rhyme." 

In  view  of  this  theory  of  the  "faintness"  of  the 
music  of  the  English  heroic  line,  some  of  the  con- 
trasts between  the  practice  of  these  poets  in  dramatic 
and  non-dramatic  verse  are  especially  illuminating. 
Light  and  weak  endings — an  nth  power  of  the  un- 
stressed ending — which  are  a  familiar  device  of  the 
drama,  are  almost  unknown  in  non-dramatic  verse. 
Feminine  endings,  an  important  feature  of  dramatic 
verse,  are  either  entirely  avoided  in  non-dramatic 
verse,  or  are  but  little  used  (except  by  Blair).  More- 
over, Milton  entirely,  and  the  others  in  the  main, 
use  as  feminine  endings  only  words  or  phrases  in 
which  the  unstressed  syllable  is  very  Hght ;  whereas, 
in  the  drama,  the  unstressed  syllable  is  frequently 
heavy.  Considering  that  Arnold  alone  gets  a  definite 
and  calculated  eflFect  by  avoiding  feminine  endings, 

S6 


SUMMARY  AND  COMMENT 

and  that  the  other  moderns  do  not  excUide  the  heavy 
unstressed  syllable,  I  suspect  that  the  poets  have 
looked  upon  feminine  endings  in  non-dramatic  verse 
rather  as  a  convenient  'license'  than  as  a  positive 
artistic  device.  In  non-dramatic  verse,  too,  the  so- 
called  "epic"  caesuras,  which  are  akin  to  feminine 
endings,  are  little  used  as  compared  with  the  drama ; 
and  lines  shorter  or  longer  than  five  beats  are 
avoided.  Practically  all  the  possible  alexandrines 
(and  they  are  surprisingly  few  in  number)  can  be 
explained  as  having  two  trisyllabic  feet,  or  feminine 
endings  with  two  unstressed  syllables.  The  anapests 
and  dactyls  are  almost  always  'duple  time'  feet,  and 
possible  monosyllabic  feet  (except  the  very  rare  nine- 
syllable  lines)  are  invariably  accompanied  by  com- 
pensating anapests  or  dactyls.  I  cannot  say  whether 
or  not  longer  and  shorter  lines  in  the  drama  will 
finally  be  explained  as  due  to  careless  revision  by 
the  author  or  others,  but  in  our  present  texts  they 
are  vastly  more  numerous  than  in  non-dramatic 
verse.  I  do  not  know,  either,  whether  or  not  'duple 
time'  anapests  and  dactyls  are  characteristic  of  all 
blank  verse.  In  any  case  these  items  show  that 
the  absence  in  non-dramatic  blank  verse  of  features 
which  mark  and  strengthen  the  rhythm  has  mini- 
mised the  use  of  devices  which  in  other  measures 
vary  the  rhythm,  but  in  blank  verse  tend  to  sub- 
merge it.  Moreover — though  the  point  needs  further 
study — ^the  poets  seem  to  have  been  about  equally 
careful  of  the  iambic  rhythm  and  of  the  five-beat 
line. 

Although  this  study  does  not  pretend  to  be  a  his- 
tory, it  does  make  clear  a  few  changes  in  the  prac- 
tice of  blank  verse  between  Milton  and  Swinburne. 
On  the  whole,  after  Milton,  endstopt  and  unbroken 
lines  and  feminine  endings  increased;  and  run-on 
lines  grew  materially  fewer.     There  are  fewer  cae- 

87 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

suras  at  the  ends  of  feet,  and  consequently  more  at 
the  middle  of  feet ;  there  are  not  only  more  caesuras 
near  the  ends  of  the  line,  but  more  of  them  are  em- 
phasized, especially  by  connection  with  run-on  lines. 
These  decreases  in  run-on  and  increases  in  endstopt 
and  unbroken  lines  look  like  an  attempt  to  empha- 
size line-rhythm,  but  all  the  other  changes  tend  in 
varying  degrees  to  subordinate  the  line-rhythm. 
Still  there  has  been  no  radical  change  from  Milton's 
day  to  ours ;  the  'development'  of  non-dramatic  blank 
verse  has  meant  only  experiments  in  the  delicacies 
of  manipulation.  This  attention  to  the  subtler  ef- 
fects, this  'sophistication'  if  you  v^ish,  in  making  the 
rhythm  less  marked  has  brought  it  about  that  more 
feet  retain  their  neutral  character,  has  made  varying 
collocations  of  sounds  contribute  their  ease  or  diffi- 
culty of  pronunciation  to  a  somewhat  more  percep- 
tible shading  of  the  tempo,  to  something  more 
tangibly  quantitative  than  before.  I  am  sure  that 
in  Surrey  the  rhythm  was  dominant,  that  in  Milton  I 
it  was  stronger  than  in  the  moderns.  In  Surrey  and  I 
Milton  we  can  find,  if  not  parallels,  at  least  approxi- 
mations to  such  dominance  of  rhythm  over  logical 
stresses  as  in 

On  the  light  fantastic  toe, 
or 

Where  an  army  in  battle  array  had  marched  out. 

In  modern  blank  verse  at  any  rate  the  contrast  be- 
tween stressed  and  unstressed  syllables  has  grown 
less  sharp.  The  change  is  obvious,  but  I  cannot  say 
how  far  it  is  a  result  of  the  practice  of  blank  verse, 
and  how  far  blank  verse  shares  it  with  modern 
English  verse  in  general. 

What  I  have  said  in  the  last  few  pages  should 
serve  to  correct  a  few  common  misconceptions  as  to 
the  importance  of  particular  details  of  technique. 
The  most  serious  and  widespread  is  the  general  no- 

88 


SUMMARY  AND  COMMENT 

tion,  contained  by  implication  in  many  obiter  dicta 
about  this  or  that  poet's  'mastery/  that  blank  verse 
has  many  secrets  peculiar  to  itself.  We  have  seen 
that  this  notion  is  generally  the  result  of  a  failure 
to  discriminate  carefully  between  details  of  technique 
peculiar  to  blank  verse,  and  those  common  to  most 
good  verse  or  even  to  most  effective  composition 
whether  in  verse  or  prose.  The  chief  correction  of 
details  is  that  in  the  case  of  both  run-on  lines  and 
feminine  endings  we  have  somewhat  overestimated 
their  importance  in  determining  the  movement  of 
the  verse.  Neither  device  is  used  so  often  or  is  so 
necessary  as  is  often  assumed. 

John  Milton,  as  I  have  shown,  with  the  exception 
of  run-on  lines,  used  less  often  than  the  moderns 
the  various  devices  for  subordinating  the  rhythm. 
Both  historically  and  technically  it  is  interesting  that 
Milton's  treatment  of  his  verse  and  the  tightening 
of  the  couplet  came  in  the  same  generation  and  were 
due  to  the  same  causes.  Indeed  there  is  something 
ironic  in  the  fact — usually  overlooked — that  the  very 
details  of  technique  which  contribute  most  to  the 
modern  reader's  pleasure  in  Milton's  verse  are  pre- 
cisely the  details  which  are  most  clearly  attributable 
to  the  generation  in  which  Milton  wrote — that  the 
same  generation  and  the  same  tendencies  should 
have  produced  both  that  particular  type  of  couplet 
which  the  19th  century  Romanticists  most  repro- 
bated, and  the  blank  verse  epic  which  they  most 
unanimously  and  sincerely  admired.  Technically, 
also,  it  is  characteristic  of  the  differences  between 
the  two  verse-forms  that  blank  verse  took  the  im- 
pression of  Milton's  technique  exactly  as  it  took  the 
impression  of  his  rhetoric,  without  establishing  a 
standard  'type'  of  blank  verse  in  the  sense  in  which 
Dryden  and  Pope  established  the  vogue  of  a  type 
of  couplet. 

89 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Milton's  verse  has  three  especial  qualities,  two  of 
which  have  been  often  commented  upon.  The  first 
t-<)f  these  is  his  Latin  sonority,  his  'tone-color/  which 
I  have  tried  to  show  is  not  a  quality  peculiar  to  blank 
verse.  The  second  is  his  distribution  of  strong 
(.-pauses,  which  has  been  somewhat  overestimated ; 
Milton  does  distribute  his  pauses  widely  and  skil- 
fully, but  not  demonstrably  more  than  some  other 
men.  The  third,  which  has  not  hitherto  been  clearly 
recognised,  but  which  contributes  greatly  to  the 
/effectiveness  of  the  other  two,  is  his  keeping  care- 
/  fully  to  a  more  obvious  rhythm  than  the  later  men. 
'  (It  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  I  am  here  pointing 
out  technical  differences  of  attitude  and  treatment, 
which  help  to  explain  differences  of  product,  but 
which  do  not  necessarily  involve  any  question  of 
the  relative  excellence  of  the  product.)  In  just  this 
open  recognition  of  the  rhythm  lies,  it  seems  to  me, 
not  only  the  chief  difference  between  Milton's  blank 
verse  and  that  of  the  later  poets,  but  also  its  chief 
technical  distinction.  It  explains  why  Arnold's 
Sohrah  and  Riistum,  which  is  the  only  poem  we 
have  studied  in  which  the  technical  details  are  so 
formal  as  to  have  a  suggestion  of  artificiality,  is  also 
the  only  poem  which  approaches  the  imposing  stateli- 
ness  of  Paradise  Lost.  It  means  that  in  this  straight- 
forward use  of  the  conventional  movements  of  the 
verse-form.  Paradise  Lost  has  something  in  common 
with  the  minuet  and  the  oratorio.  It  means  that 
Milton  frankly  accepted  the  fact  that  he  was  using 
a  mode  of  expression  which  is  not  that  of  ordinary 
life  any  more  than  an  oratorio  is,  and  that  he  used  it 
for  precisely  that  reason — that  it  is  not  like  ordinary 
speech.  Consequently,  where  the  moderns  seem 
most  often  concerned  with  the  ars  celare  artem,  Mil- 
ton seized  upon  the  differences  between  his  medium 
of  expression  and  everyday  speech,  and  made  them 
obvious  sources  of  effectiveness. 

90 


VI.    THE  INDIVIDUAL  POETS  ^ 

Surrey,  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of:  1547,  Aeneid, 
II,  IV. 

LI.  Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fern.  Uns. 

201 1  20.18     52.41     27.41     51-26     0.54    427 

Tot.  Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

Cses.         Mid.  End.            i                 2               3 

1 169          18.82  81.18          4.61           11.20          3.93 

456789 

52.60            487  1360          4.79            3.76          0.68 

Gascoigne,  George:  1576,  The  Steele^  Glas. 

LI.  Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.    Fem.  Uns. 

1 179  17.64    28.15     5421     70.56    0.93    907 

Tot.  Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

Caes.          Mid.  End.             123 

459          17.55  82.35          457          1394          305 

4               5  6                 789^ 

61.65            3.92  5-88          3.26            3.05          0.65 

Surrey  and  Gascoigne  are  alike  in  having  less  than 
one-fifth  of  their  lines  run-on,  although  even  that 
proportion  is  distinctly  greater  than  in  the  couplets 
of  Waller,  Dryden,  Pope,  or  even  Chaucer.  Surrey, 
who  was  translating  narrative,  has  many  more  end- 
stopt  lines  than  Gascoigne,  who  wrote  satire,  which 
is  presumably  sententious.  Gascoigne  got  from  his 
very  large  proportion  of  commastopt  lines  the  flexi- 
bility, as  compared  with  the  couplet,  of  tying  a  whole 
bundle  of  parallel  lines  with  one  sentence.  For  ex- 
ample, the  14th  paragraph,  which  begins:  "This  is 
the  cause  beleve  me  now,  my  Lorde,"  has  18  parallel 

1  The  poets  are  arranged  as  nearly  as  may  be  in  the 
order  in  which  they  wrote. 

91 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

lines  all  in  one  sentence — 3,  feat  of  rhetoric  that, 
however  much  beyond  measure  it  may  be,  the  coup- 
let would  hardly  permit.  Gascoigne  has  more  com- 
mastopt  lines  and  many  more  unbroken  lines  than 
any  one  else,  and  these  two  details  of  metre  are 
clearly  due  to  his  sentence-structure.^  In  these 
two  men,  whose  verse  is  sometimes  almost  painfully 
inelastic  and  uninspired,  the  relations  of  metrical 
technique  and  rhetoric  are  somewhat  less  mistak- 
able  than  in  the  work  of  more  capable  artists.  Both 
men  show  a  naively  mechanical  counting  of  syllables, 
and  leave  the  impression  that  they  commonly 
wrenched  stresses  and  word  order  to  fit  the  metre; 
certainly  they  show  very  little  deftness  in  securing 
a  natural  undercurrent  of  rhythm.^ 

Both  poets  use  very  few  feminine  endings  (only 
II  each),  and  these  are  all  light  syllables  such  as 
-ed,  -er,  -ish,  -eth,  -ing;  Surrey  once  ends  a  line 
with  — redoub,  instead  of  — redouble. 

Surrey  has  ten  rhymes,  one  quatrain  (2.  1019-22), 
and  two  rhetorical  repetitions  (2.  462-3;  2.  1033-4). 
Gascoigne  has  9  rhymes,  and  one  repetition ;  in  ad- 
dition he  has  — past,  — passe ;  and  — see,  — seas. 

Both  poets  show  the  stiffness  of  their  versifica- 
tion by  having  more  than  half  of  their  caesuras  after 
the  fourth  syllable,  and  more  than  four-fifths  at  the 
ends  of  feet. 

1  There  are  over  a  dozen  passages  in  The  Steele  Glas 
in  which  a  series  of  lines  begin  with  the  same  word, 
and  are  parallel  in  structure.  This  device  is  not  neces- 
sarily either  vicious  or  ineffective;  witness  Shakspere's 
Sonnet  66:  "Tir'd  with  all  these." 

2  Some  of  Surrey's  wrenchings  to  fit  the  measure  are : 
Minerva,  M'merve;  Achille,  Menelae,  Fyrrhus;  Anchise, 
and  Anchises;  'lieved  for  believed;  Moonlight,  offspring, 
children,  bloodshed,  goddess,  season,  palace,  virgin, 
phrensy. 

In  Gascoigne,  -i-on,  -i-ence,  -i-or,  are  invariable 
scansions. 

92 


Tot. 

Cses. 

Mid. 

9844 

34-00 

4 

5 

22.52 

II. 19 

JOHN  MILTON 

Milton^  John:  1667,  Paradise  Lost;  1671,  Para- 
dise Regained,  and  Samson  Agonistes. 

LI.       Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.   Fern.  Uns. 
Paradise  Lost  ^ 

10558    58.36     16.91     24.73     28.92     1.4-     3-8- 
Paradise  Regained 

2070    44.78    22.85     32.37     3932    372     5.70 
Samson  Agonistes 

1758    41.41     27.24     31.25     49.09  10.29     6.31 

3    Poems  2    14386     54.41     18.89    26.70    32.88    2.81     4.37 
In  Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Regained, — 12,628 
lines  :^ 

Percentage  of  caesuras  after 
End.  I  2  3 

66.00  i.oo  8.89        10.06 

6789 
24.98        10.83  948  0.87 

The  most  interesting  item  about  Milton's  verse 
is  the  steady  drop  from  poem  to  poem  in  the  pro- 
portion of  run-on  lines,  accompanied  by  an  equally 
marked  increase  in  endstopt  lines.  The  differences 
between  Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes 
are  very  likely  due  to  the  change  from  long  formal 
speeches  to  relatively  vivacious  dialogue.  The  great- 
est change,  however,  is  between  Paradise  Lost  and 
Paradise  Regained,  and  this  shift  in  Milton's  prac- 
tice,  in  connection  with  the  fact  that  in  both  Paradise 

^  In  the  different  books  of  Paradise  Lost,  the  pro- 
portions vary  irregularly,  though  the  run-on  lines  never 
fall  to  50%,  and  the  endstopt  lines  never  rise  above 
20%.  The  relation  between  run-on  and  endstopt  lines 
is  not  marked,  except  that  Books  I  and  II,  which  have 
5  or  6%  more  run-on  lines  than  any  other  book,  have 
2%  fewer  endstopt  than  the  others. 

2  In  the  792  blank  verse  lines  of  Camus,  1634,  the 
figures  are:  run-on,  40.90;  endstopt,  18.43;  commastopt, 
40.67;  unbroken,  54.29;  feminine  endings,  8.30;  un- 
stressed endings,  13.25. 

3  The  separate  figures  for  the  two  poems  are  so  nearly 
alike  that  it  does  not  seem  worth  while  to  add  them  to 
the  already  burdensome  number. 

93 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Lost  and  Paradise  Regained  the  run-on  lines  are 
most  frequent,  and  endstopt  lines  fewest  in  the  ist 
Book,  perhaps  implies  that  Milton's  theory,  strong 
at  the  outset,  yielded  somewhat  as  the  poet  warmed 
to  his  work.  If  we  may  assume  that  Milton  thought 
run-on  lines  a  chief  grace  of  blank  verse,  and  end- 
stopt lines  the  greatest  bar  to  continuous  melody, 
then  it  would  seem  that  he  found  his  original  pro- 
portions difficult  to  maintain.  This  hypothesis  may 
seem  a  little  more  plausible  when  we  remember  that, 
although  Shelley  and  Swinburne  use  nearly  as  many 
run-on  lines  as  Milton  did  in  Paradise  Lost,  and 
fewer  endstopt,  Wordsworth,  Keats,  Browning,  and 
Tennyson  use  noticeably  fewer  run-on  and  more 
endstopt  lines.  Commastopt  lines  which,  as  already 
explained,  serve  on  occasion  either  as  run-on  or  end- 
stopt, but  are  certainly  more  subdued  in  their  effect 
than  either,  are  more  frequent  in  Paradise  Regained 
and  Samson  Agonistes  than  in  Paradise  Lost.  Only 
Young,  Philips,  and  Newcomb  have  a  smaller  pro- 
portion of  commastopt  lines  than  Milton's  average, 
and  only  Newcomb  fewer  than  Paradise  Lost. 

Milton's  use  of  unbroken  lines  increased  rather  in 
proportion  to  the  decrease  in  run-on  than  to  the  in- 
crease in  endstopt  lines. ^  This  increase  also  is  curi- 
ously in  accord  with  the  practice  of  the  later  poets, 
for  Shelley,  Tennyson,  Swinburne,  Browning, 
Wordsworth,  and  Keats,  all  have  a  somewhat  larger 
proportion  of  unbroken  lines  than  even  Paradise 
Regained.  Here  again,  it  seems  that  there  may  have 
been  some  conflict  between  Milton's  theory  and  his 
practice. 

In  Paradise  Lost,  feminine  endings  occur  in  less 
than  1.4%  of  the  lines — there  are  only  146  in  the 

1  Nearly  one-fifth  of  the  unbroken  lines  in  Samson 
Agonistes  are  short  lines,  so  that  the  increase  over  Para- 
dise Regained  is  not  significant. 

Q4 


JOHN  MILTON 

whole  10,558  lines — but  in  Paradise  Regained  this 
percentage  is  more  than  doubled,  and  in  Samson 
Agonistes  rises  to  over  10%.  In  the  two  earlier 
poems,  feminine  endings  are  certainly  not  frequent 
enough  to  make  their  presence  a  ma,rked  feature  of 
the  verse,  and  even  in  the  Samson  Agonistes  the 
amount  is  small  for  dramatic  verse. 

For  his  feminine  endings  Milton  almost  invariably 
chose  words  in  which  the  extra  syllable  was  light — 
such  words  as  these  from  Bk.  XII:  as^i^ming,  rtsid- 
ing,  rather,  Tdihevnacle,  Testimony  repre^^w^ng, 
Cerew^wies,  Spirit  (twice),  merits.  Except  for  four 
cases,  toward  the  end  of  Bk.  X,  Milton  does  not 
use  feminine  endings  in  Paradise  Lost  in  which  the 
extra  syllable  is  a  pronoun,  although  he  does  admit 
such  endings  8  times  in  Paradise  Regained,  and  over 
50  times  in  Samson  Agonistes.  Mr.  Bridges^  gives 
two  lines  from  Paradise  Lost,  which  he  reduces  to 
five  beats  by  making  the  last  two  syllables  extra- 
metrical.  In  Samson  Agonistes,  however,  as  Mr. 
Bridges  points  out,  there  are  a  number  of  lines  which 
are  at  least  more  easily  scanned  with  six  beats  than 
with  five. 

Of  unstressed  endings  also,  Milton  used  more  and 
more,  although  even  6.31%  in  Samson  Agonistes  is 
hardly  evidence  of  any  special  fondness  for  the  de- 
vice. Their  entirely  haphazard  occurrence  in  the 
various  books  of  Paradise  Lost,  together  with  their 
relatively  small  number,  indicates,  I  think,  that  Mil- 
ton at  best  took  no  pains  to  avoid  them,  as  some  of 
his  successors  expressly  did. 

In  each  successive  poem  we  find  Milton  using 
fewer  run-on,  somewhat  more  endstopt,  many  more 
unbroken  lines,  and  noticeably  more  feminine  and 
unstressed  endings.  These  facts  are  hardly  debat- 
able;  the   reasons   or   inferences   are  less   certain. 

1  "Milton's  Prosody,"  p.  2 :  — society,  — satiety. 
95 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Paradise  Lost  is  pretty  generally  more  esteemed,  and 
certainly  better  known,  than  Paradise  Regained. 
Are  we  to  assume  that  Milton's  verse  deteriorated? 
It  is  j>erhaps  wiser  to  say  that  in  Paradise  Regained 
Milton  had,  for  him  and  under  the  circumstances,  a 
less  happy  subject,  and  that  the  relative  popularity 
of  the  two  poems  does  not  rest  to  an  appreciable 
extent  on  matters  of  verse  technique.  The  fact  that 
Samson  AgonisteSy  the  third  poem,  is  quasi-dramatic 
instead  of  epic,  affords  some  basis  for  suggesting 
that  the  last  two  poems  were  the  work  of  a  virtuoso 
who  knew  that  in  Paradise  Lost  he  had  done  one 
thing  admirably,  and  who  would  rather  experiment 
than  duplicate  the  performance.  Again,  the  fact 
that  these  changes  in  versification  correspond  to  the 
order  in  which  the  poems  were  written,  seems  at 
first  glance  to  confirm  the  importance  of  metrical 
tests  in  fixing  chronology,  and  suggests  comparison 
with  Shakspere.  There  is  a  certain  parallel  between 
the  two  men,  although  we  need  to  remember  that 
Shakspere  began  writing  blank  verse  when  he  was 
about  twenty-five,  and  stopped  before  he  was  fifty; 
whereas  Milton  wrote  all  three  of  his  poems  within 
eight  or  ten  years,  and  after  he  was  fifty.  In  the 
plays  written  about  1600  we  find  Shakspere's  verse 
at  its  highest  efficiency  as  an  easy,  flexible  medium 
of  expression,  "a  clear  unwrinkled  song,"  almost 
free  from  metrical  puzzles  and  vagaries.  Thereafter, 
Shakspere  seems  more  and  more  to  have  experi- 
mented with  his  verse,  with  no  loss  of  mastery,  with 
perhaps  snatches  of  more  thrilling  magic,  but  with 
only  rare  and  brief  returns  to  the  clear  straightfor- 
ward fluency  of  Tzvelfth  Night  or  of  Julius  Ccesar. 
Milton's  history  is  like  Shakspere's  only  in  this,  that 
Paradise  Lost  is  certainly  freer  from  metrical  puz- 
zles  and  licenses  than  are  the  two  later  poems.^ 
1  These  comparisons,  it  should  be  understood,  are  of 

96 


JOHN  PHILIPS 

Philips,  John  :  1701,  The  Splendid  Shilling,  143 
lines;  1705,  Blenheim,  493  lines;  1708,  Cyder,  1465 
lines. 

LI.       Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.   Fern.  Uns. 
3   Poems         2101     61.25     13.04    25.71     17.41     I  ^      2.71 
Splendid  Shilling, 

143  44.05  18.15  37.80  50.34 
Blenheim  493  64.90  10.95  24.15  15.21 
Cyder  1465     61.70     13.24     25.06     14.94 

Although  both  The  Splendid  Shilling  and  Blen- 
heim are  almost  too  short  to  give  a  sound  basis  for 
inference,  the  increase  in  run-on  lines  and  the  de- 
crease in  endstopt  and  unbroken  lines  are  more 
marked  than  similar  changes  in  any  other  poets 
except  Browning  and  Tennyson — men  who  wrote  on 
various  themes  during  fifty  years  each.  It  is  a  little 
remarkable  that  Newcomb  and  Philips,  who  are 
among  the  earliest  followers  of  Milton  in  our  list, 
should  be  the  only  ones  to  materially  outdo  him  in 
their  use  of  run-on  lines. 

Watts,  Isaac:  1709,  A  Sight  of  Christ,  73  lines; 
To  Sarissa,  80  lines;  True  Courage,  52  lines;  The 
Dacian  Battle,  225  lines;  Elegiac  Thoughts  on  the 
Death  of  Anne  Warner,  99  Hues;  To  Mitio,  I,  II, 
361  lines.2 

LI.       Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.   Fem.  Uns. 
6  Poems  890    47-30     17-86    34.84  449    2.13 

There  is  not  enough  of  Watts'  blank  verse  to 
make  it  important;  it  is  of  interest  only  because  his 

facts  of  metrical  technique,  and  their  explanation  and 
application  are  both  complicated  by  many  other  con- 
siderations, such  as  in  Shakspere  a  change  of  mood  and 
interests,  an  increasing  subordination  of  verse  to  the 
demands  and  opportunities  of  dramatic  presentation, 
and  in  Milton  a  possible  flagging  of  interest  or  of 
energy  in  Paradise  Regained  and  a  change  from  epic  to 
Greek  choral  drama  in  Samson  Agonistes. 

1  Blenheim,  96,  — ^prowess. 

2  Part  III  of  To  Mitio  is  Pindaric. 

97 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

percentage  of  feminine  endings,  small  as  it  is,  has 
been  surpassed  by  but  two  men,  Blair  and  Browning. 
New  COMB,  Thomas:  1723,  The  Last  Judgment 
of  Men  and  Angels.  A  poem  in  12  books,  after 
the  manner  of  Milton. 

LI.       Run,    End.    Com.    Unb.   Fern.  Uns. 
Bks.  1,3,  5,7,9,  II 

6426    70.18     11.99     17-83     1739 
Entire   poem, 

12383  "^  I  ?  1      2  ? 

In  Bks.  I,  3,  5,  7,  9,  II  Strong  pauses  after 

Tot.  Mid.  End.  i  2  3 

1626  59-94  40.01  0.73   .         4.18  7.01 

456789 
13.96  22.38  20.04        29.76  1.83  0.06 

Newcomb  and  his  poem  are  all  but  unknown  to- 
day; he  is  not  mentioned  even  by  the  special  histo- 
ries of  his  period,  although  the  DNB  gives  him  a 
fraction  of  a  column,  and  one  kindly  antiquarian 
reports  that  he  was  ''descended  on  his  mother's  side 
from  the  poet  Spenser."  As  late  as  1757,  he  pub- 
lished ''Mr.  Hervey's  Contemplations  on  a  Flower 
Garden,  done  into  blank  verse  (after  the  manner 
of  Dr.  Young),"  which  was  reprinted,  with  addi- 
tions, in  1764.  He  does  not  deserve  revival,  al- 
though as  I  recall  his  poem  after  several  years  it 
was  not  unpleasant  reading, — perhaps  because  it 
was  a  beautiful  folio  printed  in  large  type  on  un- 
usually good  paper. 

Newcomb  is  extreme  in  all  the  details  of  his  verse, 
for  he  has  more  run-on  lines  than  any  one  else,  and 
fewer  endstopt,  commastopt,  and  unbroken  lines, 
and  he  has  only  one  feminine  ending  and  two  un- 
stressed— all  three  doubtful  cases.    Judging  from  his 

1  This  — ever  (8.134)  is  probably  a  mistake  of  the 
printer,  for  in  25  other  instances  at  the  end  of  a  line 
it  is  printed  — e'er;  and  — over  is  similarly  printed  — o'er 
24  times. 

98 


JAMES  THOMSON 

strong  pauses,  he  is  the  earUest  of  the  men  here 
studied  to  exploit  the  caesuras  after  the  5th  and  7th 
syllables,  following  Glover  closely  in  the  former, 
and  going  even  beyond  Swinburne  in  the  latter. 
Aside  from  these  caesuras,  Newcomb  allowed  him- 
self only  the  liberty  of  run-on  lines,  but  of  these 
he  made  such  extreme  use  that  his  endstopt  and 
commastopt  lines  together  are  no  more  numerous 
than  the  endstopt  lines  cf  Browning,  Thomson,  or 
Gascoigne,  and  fall  below  those  of  Keats,  Landor, 
Arnold,  or  Blair.  Newcomb  shows,  however,  that 
a  man  in  Pope's  day  could  write  a  very  long,  didactic 
poem  entirely  free  from  either  couplet  structure  or 
its  common  rhetorical  accompaniment  of  antithesis. 

Thomson,  James:  1726-30,  The  Seasons,  5423 
lines;  The  Hymn,  118  Hues;  1727,  To  the  Memory 
of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  209  lines  ;  1729,  Britannia,  299 
lines;  To  the  Memory  of  Congrevc,  166  lines; 
i7S4-^>  Liberty,  3378  lines;  1738,  To  the  Memory 
of  Lord  Talbot,  371  lines. 

LI.       Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.   Fern.  Uns. 
The  Seasons  5423     30.00    28.72     41.28    32.67 
6  Poems,        9964  i  ^       1.24 

Tancred  and  Sigismunda,  Acts  I,  III   &  V 

1412  lines  37.25  2 

1  Autumn,  269,  — feature.  Thomson  has  such  evasions 
of  feminine  endings  as: 

Wide  o'er  his  isles  the  branching  Oronoque  (Summer,  834) 

and 

All  is  the  gift  of  industry,  — whate'er       (Autumn,  141) 

2  Once  Thomson  has  — howe'er,  but  also  in  i.  4 
— never,  in  a  run-on  line,  though  it  is  possibly  a  mis- 
print. He  admits  such  endings  as  — period,  in  i.  2;  — 
interest,  — wMwerous,  Sicily,  in  consecutive  lines  in 
I.  4. 


99 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 
In  The  Seasons: 

Tot.  Percentage  of  caesuras  after 


C^s. 

Mid. 

End. 

I 

2 

3 

3815 

34.34 

65.66 

6.97 

7.36 

3.74 

Per  cent 

'run-on' 

0.44 

2.41 

1.65 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

26.84 

1370 

25-19 

7.75 

6.00 

2.14 

4.50 

3.61 

1.18 

Mr.  J.  H.  Millar  says  of  Thomson:  "His  blank 
verse  can  boast  a  novelty  of  construction  and  an 
originality  of  cadence  unrivalled  for  more  than  a 
century.  It  is  not  the  blank  verse  of  the  Elizabeth- 
ans, nor  is  it  the  blank  verse  of  Milton,  although, 
as  Mr.  Raleigh  has  pointed  out,  it  is  not  without 
strong  reminiscences  of  the  latter.  It  is  something 
sui  generis/'  ("The  Mid-Eighteenth  Century," 
1902,  p.  184-5.)  I  confess  that  I  do  not  understand 
what  Mr.  Millar  means  by  "novelty  of  construction" 
or  "original  cadences,"  as  applied  to  the  technique 
of  Thomson's  blank  verse.  It  has  neutral  propor- 
tions of  run-on,  endstopt,  commastopt,  and  unbroken 
lines,  and  avoids  feminine  and  unstressed  endings. 
It  has,  like  Milton's  verse,  almost  exactly  two- 
thirds  of  its  caesuras  at  the  ends  of  feet;  it  carries 
just  a  little  farther  Milton's  massing  of  caesuras  after 
the  4th,  5th,  and  6th  syllables,  with  a  consequent 
reduction  in  the  other  percentages,  except  after 
the  I  St  and  9th  syllables.  After  the  ist  syllable, 
although  Thomson  has  nearly  seven  times  as  many 
pauses  as  Milton,  none  of  the  increase  is  in  *run-on' 
caesuras;  after  the  9th  syllable,  Thomson's  1.18%  of 
'run-on'  caesuras  is  rivalled  only  by  Landor,  Words- 
worth, Browning,  and  Tennyson.  That  is  to  say, 
the  one  point  in  which  Thomson  may  be  said  to 
have  gone  beyond  Milton  in  the  direction  of  freedom 
is  in  doubling  Milton's  percentage  of  Vun-on'  cae- 

100 


DAVID  MAL'LET^ 

suras  after  the  9th  syllable;  in  all  other  respects,  his 
technique  shows  a  marked  reaction  toward  the  'cor- 
rectness' of  his  age.  At  the  same  time,  his  poems 
are  not  mere  unrhymed  couplets,  but  real  blank 
verse,  as  genuinely  so  as  Milton's  in  all  that  dis- 
tinguishes blank  verse  from  rhymed  measures. 
Nevertheless,  the  popularity  of  The  Seasons — which 
did  so  much  to  establish  the  vogue  of  blank  verse, 
although  they  by  no  means  'introduced'  it — was  due 
then  as  now  not  to  their  being  blank  verse,  but  to 
their  contents,  to  their  fresh  and  unmistakably  genu- 
ine attitude  toward  nature.  Consequently,  while 
Thomson  is  important  in  the  history  of  English 
Romanticism,  I  cannot  see  that  he  contributed  any- 
thing to  the  development  of  blank  verse  beyond  the 
mere  fact  of  using  it  almost  exclusively. 

Mallet,  David:  1728,  The  ExcursioUy  977  lines; 
1747,  Amyntor  and  Theodora,  or,  The  Hermit,  1406 
lines. 

Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.   Fem.  Uns. 

35.62     20.69    4369     21.31    none    0.62 

Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

End.  123 

67.87  2.75  6.65  5.37 

6789 

26.39  8.25  5.00  0.88 

Mallet  shows  the  disapproval  in  which  his  genera- 
tion held  the  feminine  ending  by  twice  writing  — o'er 
at  the  end  of  a  line.  In  the  mechanical  details  of 
his  versification  he  copies  his  friend  Thomson  fairly 
well,  but  without  success  in  other  ways.  It  seems 
hardly  necessary  to  add  that  aside  from  this  I  found 
Mallet's  verse  exceptionally  uninteresting. 

SoMERviLE,  William:  1735,  The  Chase,  2073 
lines;  1740,  Hohhinol,  1201  lines;  1742,  Field  Sports, 
286  lines. 


lOI 


Poems 

Tot. 

C^s. 

LI. 
23.83 

Mid. 

2254 

4 
29.90 

32.13 
14.81 

ENGLISH'BLANK  VERSE 

LI.       Run.    End.     Com.    Unb.   Fern.  Uns. 
3    Poems      35.60    51.96    20.70    27.34    20.05     0.14 1  1.65 
Tot.  Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

Caes.         Mid.  End.  i  23 

3085  18.39  81.61  1.84  5.64  2.85 

456789 
28.55  8.20  38.37  4.63  8.03  0.77 

In  the  small  number  of  caesuras  in  the  middle  of 
feet,  Somervile  is  the  only  poet  like  Gascoigne  and 
Surrey,  but  he  differs  from  them  in  having  more 
than  half  his  caesuras  in  the  last  four  places,  as  com- 
pared with  Surrey's  one-fourth,  and  Gascoigne's 
one-eighth.  Somervile  has  nine  rhymes,  apparently 
accidental;  but  no  cases  of  rhetorical  repetition. 

Glover,  Richard:  1737,  Leonidas,  7321  lines;  On 
Newton,  475  lines;  1739,  London,  or  the  Progress 
of  Commerce,  590  lines. 

LI.  Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fem.  Uns. 

3     Poems         8386  36.60     16.00    47.50    35.60    none    2  2 
In  Leonidas : 

Tot.  Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

Caes.          Mid.  End.             i                 23 

5722          53.80  46.20          3.32          8.05          4-85 

456789 

18.71           25.23  11.83         18.71            7-58           1.66 

In  his  exclusion  of  unstressed  and  feminine  end- 
ings Glover  is  like  Newcomb  and  Akenside.  He 
seems  also  like  Akenside  in  that  his  run-on  lines 
jump  from  35%  in  Leonidas  to  50.5  in  London, 
and  his  endstopt  lines  drop  from  16  to  13,  but  even 
this  change  does  not  bring  him  to  the  proportions 
with    which   Akenside   started.      He    differs    from 

^5  cases:  — covert,  — perish,  — melancholy,  in  The 
Chase;  — Ganderetta.  — misfortune,  in  Hahbinol.  He 
twice  has  — o'er  at  the  end  of  run-on  lines,  and  follows 
Milton  and  Spenser  in  using  'submiss'  for  'submissive.' 

2  The  possible  unstressed  endings  are  — Diomedon, 
in  Leonidas,  5.  169,  and  8.  775.  In  London,  44,  — Elbe  may- 
be a  feminine  ending;  Glover  has  — o'er  at  the  ends  of 
lines  at  least  eight  times. 

102 


RICHARD    GLOVER 

Akenside  in  that  the  proportion  of  unbroken  lines 
increases  somewhat.  Glover,  like  Newcomb,  was 
one  of  the  earliest  of  the  poets  here  discussed  to 
have  more  caesuras  in  the  middle  than  at  the  ends 
of  feet; — the  only  others  are  Landor,  Browning, 
and  Swinburne.  Glover  also,  instead  of  distributing 
these  medial  pauses  concentrated  them  in  two  places, 
for  he  and  Newcomb  and  Akenside  are  the  only 
ones  who  have  more  than  20%  of  their  pauses  after 
the  5th  syllable,  and  only  Newcomb,  Akenside,  and 
Swinburne  have  more  than  he  after  the  7th  syllable. 
Leonidas  is  now  known  by  name  only — and  de- 
servedly— as  a  stock  example  of  longwinded,  in- 
sipid mediocrity.  One  reason  is  the  change  of  taste ; 
readers  are  now  not  often  charmed,  as  many  i8th 
century  readers  really  were,  by  the  irreproachable 
elegance  of 

-the  grove 


Fann'd  by  the  breath  of  zephyrs,  and  with  rills 
From  bubbling  founts  irriguous. 

Some  details  of  its  versification,  however,  have  con- 
tributed both  to  its  reputation  in  its  own  day  and 
to  its  utter  flatness  now ;  these  are  the  absence  of 
feminine  and  unstressed  endings,  and  the  large  num- 
ber of  caesuras  after  the  7th  syllable,  all  of  which 
help  to  emphasize  the  line-rhythm,  especially  the 
last,  for  example : 


-Asia's  host 


Shrunk  back. 


Unmann'd  by  wonder. 
Among  those  clifts. 

103 


■Back  he  steps, 
-From  his  nest 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Young,  Edward:  1742-5,  The  Night  Thoughts. 

LI.       Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.    Fern.    Uns. 
The  Night  Thoughts 

9783     1550    58.15    26.35    29.20      1. 10      3.64 
Univ.  Passion,  (heroic  couplets) 

2497      6.60    63.03    30.35    43.08 
The  Revenge  (or  Zanga),  Acts  I,  III  &  V, 

1 152  lines  25.781 

Night  Thoughts,  I-VII,  5902  lines: 


Tot. 

Percentage 

of  caesuras  after 

Caes. 

Mid. 

End.' 

I 

2               3 

.o^^^^, 

42.12 

57.88 

5.46 

10.32          7.10 

'Run-on' 

caesuras, 

0.13 

1.54          1.23 

4 

5   ^ 

6 

7 

8                9 

23.92 

1586 

17.37 

11.55 
2.67 

7.77          2.15 
2.79          0.61 

Young's  small  use  of  run-on  and  excessive  use  of 
endstopt  lines  may  seem  to  bear  out  the  frequent 
assertion  that  his  blank  verse  has  "constantly  the 
run  of  the  couplet."  To  be  sure,  Young  has  more 
endstopt  lines  than  either  Dryden  or  Pope,  but  he 
has  more  run-on  Hnes  than  Chaucer.  Chaucer,  in- 
deed, seems  to  me  an  admirable  illustration  of  the 
way  in  which  a  quality  of  style  (in  Chaucer's  case, 
'liquidity'  of  diction)  is  more  clearly  responsible 
for  the  'run'  of  the  poetry  than  any  technical  matter 
of  versification.  Young  carried  his  practice  of  sen- 
tentious, antithetic  expression  very  far,  but  to  me 
his  blank  verse  does  not  read  like  couplets — certainly 
not  like  his  own  couplets.^  Young's  blank  verse 
has  more  than  twice  as  many  run-on  lines  as  his 

1  In  The  Revenge,  — ever  occurs  often  as  an  ending, 
but  always  in  endstopt  lines;  in  5.  i,  — o'er  comes  in  an 
endstopt  line. 

2  In  Bartlett,  of  56  quotations  from  the  Night 
Thoughts,  only  9  are  distichs;  in  the  first  56  from  Pope, 
all  but  9  are  couplets  or  groups  of  couplets,  and  except 
for  the  phrase  "Order  is  Heaven's  first  law,"  all  of  the 
9  are  second  lines,  where  the  rhyme  clinched  the 
thought. 

104 


EDWARD  YOUNG 

couplets,  slightly  fewer  endstopt  and  commastopt 
lines,  and  only  about  two-thirds  as  many  unbroken 
lines.  Technically,  the  run-on  and  unbroken  lines 
are  the  significant  items,  for  they  show  the  'pull'  of 
the  rhyme  in  the  couplets  and  the  freedom  which 
its  absence  gives  to  blank  verse.  I  am  not  sure  that 
blank  verse  did  not  offer  Young  more  opportunity 
than  the  couplet  for  the  sententious  manner,  weighty 
without  polished  brilliance,  and  I  find  some  support 
for  this  in  Young's  very  excess  of  endstopt  lines, 
even  as  compared  with  Pope.  The  couplet,  in  the 
hands  of  a  poet  seeking  apophthegms,  tends  very 
strongly  to  bring  the  point  of  a  statement  at  the  end 
of  every  couplet,  even  if  the  statement  does  not  re- 
quire the  full  twenty  syllables.  Blank  verse,  on  the 
other  hand,  does  not  demand  regular  spacing  of 
points,  and  is  for  that  reason  somewhat  freer.  In- 
stead of  the  regularity  of  pause  characteristic  of  the 
couplet,  we  find  in  Young's  blank  verse  frequency 
of  pause — a  frequency  not  the  result  of  punctuation, 
but  of  pithy  expression.  Technically,  then,  Young's 
blank  verse  is  of  interest  because  it  illustrates  how 
far  an  extreme  habit  of  rhetorical  expression  may 
reflect  itself  in  the  verse  without  being  in  the  least 
a  result  of  any  demands  made  by  the  verse-form 
itself. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  I  have  not  found 
in  Young  the  singing  qualities  that  mark  many 
smaller  poets  than  he,  nor  often  the  dazzling  polish 
of  Pope;  but  I  have  been  surprised  to  find,  amid  a 
good  deal  of  tumid  pomposity,  constant  evidences 
of  thought  and  care,  constant  minor  felicities  of 
idea  and  phrase,  which  go  far  toward  explaining 
his  great  and  long-continued  popularity. 


105 


LI. 

767 

Tot. 

Caes. 

Mid. 

575 

28.00 
10.08 

4 
21.56 

ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Blair,  Robert:  1743/  The  Grave. 

Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fern.  Uns. 

2530     36.76     39.94     35-99  17-47     i-95 

Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

End.  I  2  3 

72.00  4-34  9-04  3-47 

6789 

35-30  9.91  6.08  0.17 

Metrically  Blair's  interest  for  us  is  that  he  alone 
of  the  poets  in  our  list  used  feminine  endings  with 
a  freedom  approaching  that  of  the  drama.  In  five 
cases  out  of  the  134  the  extra  syllable  is  a  mono- 
syllable; and  in  line  235  he  has  — flattery,  and  in 
line  675  — witnesses.  Indeed,  unless  we  count  one 
three-beat  line  (661)  and  the  final  couplet,  the  only 
liberty  Blair  makes  use  of  is  the  feminine  ending. 
Only  Surrey,  Gascoigne,  and  Somervile  exceed  him 
in  the  proportion  of  caesuras  at  the  ends  of  feet,  and 
he  and  Somervile  are  alone  in  having  more  than  a 
third  of  their  caesuras  after  the  6th  syllable.  Both 
these  details  make  for  stiffness  of  versification,  but 
it  is  surprising  to  see  how  far  they  are  counter- 
balanced by  the  feminine  endings  and  the  fairly 
large  proportion  of  unbroken  lines.  I  have  been 
unable  to  learn  anything  about  either  his  aims  or 
his  models.  His  versification  shows  that  he  could 
not  have  studied  Milton  closely,  and  that  the  Grave 
owes  to  the  Night  Thoughts  only  their  demonstra- 
tion that  there  was  an  audience  for  poems  on  such 
themes.  Blair's  letter  to  Watts  is  not  necessary  to 
free  him  from  the  charge  of  imitating  Young. 

Akenside,  Mark  :  1774,  The  Pleasures  of  Imagi- 
nation. 

1  Dennis  notes  that  in  "a  letter  dated  Feb.  25th, 
1741-2,  Blair  in  transmitting  the  MS.  of  the  poem  to 
a  friend  states  that  the  greater  portion  of  it  was  com- 
posed several  years  before  his  ordination  ten  years 
previously."  ("Age  of  Pope,"  84,  note.)  This  friend  was 
Isaac  Watts. 

106 


LI. 

1999 

Tot. 

Caes. 

Mid. 

1339 

48.80 

i. 

5 

19.86 

20.01 

MARK  AKENSIDE 

Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fern.  Uns. 
56.27     12.75     3098    41.47  none  none 
Percentage  of  caesuras  after 
End.  I  2  3 

51.20  2.53  6.12  5.75 

6789 

21.21  19.85  4.10  0.5Q 

Akenside  used  very  few  trisyllables  of  any  sort 
at  the  ends  of  lines,  and  in  his  avoidance  of  both 
feminine  and  unstressed  endings  he  followed  strictly 
the  canons  of  the  i8th  century.  In  the  proportion 
of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines,  he  is  close  to  Shelley, 
and  not  far  from  Milton  and  Wordsworth.  In  the 
proportion  of  unbroken  lines,  Akenside  follows 
Wordsworth  and  Shelley  in  using  noticeably  more 
than  Milton. 

The  figures  for  the  individual  cantos  of  the  Pleas- 
ures of  Imagination  show  a  slight  increase  in  run-on 
lines  from  54.14  to  57.66,  and  a  somewhat  more 
pronounced  decrease  of  endstopt  lines  from  16.78 
to  11.84.  When  Akenside  revised  his  poem  some 
years  later,  these  tendencies  were  both  confirmed,  as 
the  figures  show : 

Revision:  Canto  I,  1757  734  55-31  10.62  34.07  36.92 

Canto  II,  1765  705  63.68  10.21  26.11  36.87 

Canto  III,  1770  540  65.37  9.25  25.38  3574 

Canto  IV,  1770  170  45.88  7.05  47.07  27.06 

Omitting  Canto  IV,  which  Akenside  left  unfinished, 
this  revision  shows  that  Akenside,  beginning  with 
almost  as  large  a  percentage  of  run-on  lines  as  Mil- 
ton had  in  Paradise  Lost,  and  with  an  even  smaller 
per  cent  of  endstopt  lines,  steadily  increased  the  one 
and  decreased  the  other,  thus  exactly  reversing  Mil- 
ton's experience.  This  extreme  use  of  run-on  lines 
and  avoidance  of  endstopt  ones  seems  to  be  slightly 
reflected  in  the  decrease  of  unbroken  lines,  but  even 
then  Akenside  has  more  unbroken  lines  than  Milton. 
Akenside,  however,  is  curiously  near  both  Milton 

107 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

and  Wordsworth  in  all  the  matters  of  the  table. 
His  merit  as  a  poet  is  certainly  not  great;  his  de- 
fects are  just  as  certainly  not  in  the  matters  of  tech- 
nique which  we  have  thus  far  considered.  It  might 
be  inferred  from  this  that  poetic  excellence  is  not  to 
be  found  in  technique  and  that  therefore  a  study  of 
Milton's  prosody  is  of  little  value.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  very  useful  to  compare  the  work  of  Milton  with 
that  of  such  men  as  Akenside,  because  the  compari- 
son helps  to  make  clear  what  might  otherwise  be 
uncertain,  namely,  that  Paradise  Lost  is  great,  not 
so  much  because  Milton  recognized  certain  limita- 
tions and  opportunities  of  his  metre  (as,  for  in- 
stance. Pope  did  in  his  use  of  the  heroic  couplet), 
but  rather  because  blank  verse  so  well  reflects  all 
the  various  excellences  of  sonority  and  rhetoric.  In 
short,  the  prime  advantage  of  blank  verse  as  a  ve- 
hicle for  English  poetry  is  that  it  offers  fewer  tech- 
nical restrictions  than  any  other  verse  form  we  have, 
and  therefore  expresess  more  precisely  and  deli- 
cately, with  least  refraction,  the  numberless  qualities 
of  thought,  feeling,  and  vocabulary  which  are  poetic. 
Shenstone,  William  :  Love  and  Honour,  325 
lines ;  The  Ruined  Abbey,  or,  The  Effe-cts  of  Super- 
stition, 383  lines  ;  Economy,  649  lines. 

LI.       Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fern.  Uns. 
3    Poems,        1357     4502     2439     30.59     21.29    none    2.21 

Shenstone's  nearest  approach  to  a  feminine  end- 
ing is  — friar,  in  the  Ruined  Abbey;  in  Economy, 
3.  74,  he  has  — e'er.     One  line  from  Economy 

The  cloud-wrought  canes,  the  gorgeous  snuff-boxes, 

obviously  imitated  from  Shakspere,  illustrates  both 
the  avoidance  of  a  feminine  ending,  and  the  much 
more  important  fact  that  real  poetry  is  always  some- 
thing more  than  metre  and  idea,  — that  it  is  a  matter 

108 


WILLIAM  COWPER 

of  cadence,  of  a  felicitous  collocation  of  sounds  as 
unmeasurable  as  it  is  unmistakable. 

CowPER,  William:  1785,  The  Task,  5185  lines; 
1791,  The  Iliady  Bks.  I,  VI,  XI,  and  XII,  3004  lines. 


LI. 

Run. 

End.     Com. 

Unb. 

Fem.  Uns. 

2   Poems 

8189 

48.55 

24.32     27.13 

37.01 

3 '      0.39 

In  The  Task : 

Tot. 

Percentage  of  ( 

caesuras 

i  after 

Caes. 

Mid. 

End. 

I 

2 

3 

3262 

42.99 

57-01 

1.62 

6.19 

9.81 

'Run-on' 

caesuras. 

0.21 

2.78 

6.68 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

21.67 

14.65 

22.25 

15.42 

6.89 

1.44 

10.82 

4.87 

0.45 

Cowper's  Task  is  like  Gray's  Elegy  and  Gold- 
smith's Deserted  Village  in  that,  although  the  feeling 
is  at  least  mildly  Romantic,  the  diction  and  the 
handling  of  the  metre  follow  the  Classic  mode.  In 
all  of  them  the  words  are  precisely  chosen  and  fitted 
together  with  a  nice  appreciation  of  the  total  effect. 
To  modern  readers  the  unfailing  'correctness'  of  the 
result  occasionally  sounds  formal,  or  so  restrained 
as  to  seem  conventional  and  somewhat  lacking  in 
sincerity,  conviction,  intensity,  or  whatever  word 
best  describes  that  expression  of  emotional  matters 
or  attitude  which  we  have  been  trained  to  look  upon 
as  the  essence  of  poetry.  In  all  three  poems  we  are 
likely  to  be  most  impressed  by  the  carefulness  of 
the  workmanship ; — in  The  Task  more  than  in  the 
others  by  its  extreme  neatness.  This  effect  is  helped 
by  Cowper's  observance  of  i8th  century  metrical 
conventions ;  The  Task  has  no  feminine  endings  and 

^  Two  in  Iliad,  I,  — Apollo,  — inextinguishable;  one 
possible  instance  in  The  Task,  VI:  "Sacred  to  neatness 
and  repose,  the  alcove."  But  Cowper  elsewhere  clearly 
scans  "alcove,"  which  seems  to  have  been  the  current 
pronunciation.     See   the   "Oxford    Dictionary." 

109 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

only  17  unstressed.  In  The  Task  and  in  the  Iliad 
the  percentages  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines  vary 
but  little  in  the  different  books — little  as  compared 
with  Paradise  Lost  or  the  Idylls  of  the  King — and 
the  reason  probably  is  that  The  Task  at  least  has 
less  variety  of  tone  or  treatment  than  the  other 
poems.  In  the  other  details  of  his  verse  Cowper 
keeps  to  a  mean  which  may  be  called  'golden,'  but 
which  does  not  distinguish  his  verse  from  that  of 
many  others.  In  Cowper,  as  in  Wordsworth,  one 
is  tempted  to  say  that  the  absence  of  rhyme  contrib- 
uted much  to  the  quietness  of  tone,  without  obtru- 
sive cleverness  or  wit;  but  one  recalls  that  during 
these  years  George  Crabbe  was  using  the  'strict' 
couplet  for  equally  straightforward,  quiet,  unpre- 
tentious studies  in  realism.  The  truth  is  that  inas- 
much as  Cowper  was  both  a  genuine  poet  and  an 
unusually  accomplished  craftsman,  his  blank  verse 
is  admirable  without  being  notable  for  any  especia. 
qualities  of  technique  peculiar  to  the  verse-form. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage:  1798,  Gehir. 

LI.       Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fem.  Uns. 
^7Z^     3542     32.60     31.98    44.10     21       392 
Tot.  Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

Caes.  Mid.  End.  i  2  3 

1260  50.39  49.61  5.39         12.22         10.80 

'Rnn-on'       caesuras,  1.27  4.28  4.12 

456789 
13.17  14.36  15.08         17.77  912  T.90 

9.84  4.76  1. 19 

In  the  distribution  of  run-on,  endstopt,  and  com- 
mastopt  lines,  Landor  anticipated  Keats,  Arnold, 
and  Browning  in  dividing  them  almost  equally;  in 
his  avoidance  of  feminine  and  unstressed  endings 
he  is  like  most  of  the  other  i8th  century  poets.    In 

1  Book  IT,  — iron;   Book  VIl,  — heron. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH 

the  distribution  of  his  caesuras  he  has,  like  Akenside 
and  Browning,  an  almost  equal  number  in  the  middle 
and  at  the  ends  of  feet;  Glover,  Browning,  and 
Swinburne  are  the  only  ones  beside  Landor  who 
have  more  at  the  middle  than  at  the  ends  of  feet. 
Landor  is  the  only  one,  however,  who  has  io%  or 
more  of  his  caesuras  in  each  of  six  places  (after  2d 
to  7th  syllables),  and  he  comes  near  having  10% 
after  the  8th  syllable  also.  He  differs  from  Swin- 
burne— the  only  other  poet  who  has  more  caesuras 
after  the  7th  syllable  than  elsewhere — in  showing 
no  strongly  marked  preference  for  any  particular 
pause.  However,  five-sevenths  of  his  run-on  lines 
are  used  in  connection  with  his  *run-on'  caesuras. 
Like  these  details,  in  contributing  to  the  smoothness 
of  the  effect,  is  his  use  of  unbroken  lines,  in  which 
he  is  exceeded  only  by  Surrey  and  Gascoigne.  The 
details  of  Landor's  versification  are,  therefore,  re- 
markable for  their  evenness  of  distribution, — for 
the  careful  avoidance  of  excessive  or  even  consider- 
able use  of  any  one  device.  The  result  should  be, 
theoretically,  great  delicacy  of  modulation ;  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  I  must  confess  that  I  am  not  es- 
pecially taken  with  Gehir,  though  the  fault  may  lie 
with  me  or  with  the  theme,  and  not  with  Landor's 
handling  of  it. 

Wordsworth,  William  :   1800-May,  1805,  The 
Prelude;  1809-13,  The  Excursion. 


LI. 

Run. 

End. 

Com. 

Unb. 

Fern. 

Uns. 

The  Prelude  7923 

4991 

16.98 

3319 

39.73 

1.61 

7-15 

The  Excursion, 

8850 

48.09 

20.81 

31.10 

36.98 

1.02 

430 

2  Poems      16773    48.94     19.00    32.06    37.22     1.34     5.65 

3  Poems  in  couplets, 

1280    27.65     40.85     31.50     5Q.6o 
T795-6,  The  Borderers,  Acts  I  &  III, 
1066  lines,  24.01 


III 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

In  the  Excursion,  and  the  Prelude,  Books  I  to  VIT.  13020 

lines : 


Tot. 
Caes. 

Mid. 

Percentage 
End.             I 

of 

caesuras  after 
2               3 

10257 

'Run-on' 

4 

19.27 

45-77 
caesuras, 

5 
15.92 

54.23 

6 
16.50 

6.61 
I-13 
7 
13.08 
8.77 

8.55          7.45 
3.96           4.19 

9-90           1.87 
6.68          1.08 

The  proportions  of  run-on  lines  in  the  different 
books  of  the  Prelude  vary  over  25%,  but  in  the 
Excursion  only  5.44%  ;  and  the  Prelude  is  like  Para- 
dise Lost  in  having  its  highest  percentages  in  Books 
I  and  II.  The  variation  in  the  endstopt  lines  (Pre- 
lude, ^.^7%;  Excursion,  5.34%),  is  much  less  than 
that  of  the  run-on  lines.  On  the  whole,  however, 
the  figures  for  the  two  poems  are  surprisingly  alike. 

The  feminine  endings  in  the  Borderers  differ  from 
those  in  the  other  poems  both  in  quantity  and  in 
kind.  In  the  Borderers  we  find  such  cases  as  — Os- 
vvald,  — outlsLWs,  — moonWght,  — tn^elve-month, — 
churchyard,  — spendthriit,  — ploughsha.rts;  and 
such  others  (if  alexandrines,  they  are  the  only  kind 
Wordsworth  uses)  as  — discoz^eries,  — philosophy, 
— .y«/fering,  — innocent,  — tyranny,  — murderer, — 
governors,  and  — perilous. 

Metrically  the  interest  of  these  two  poems  lies  in 
their  demonstration  that  the  'flexibility'  and  'adapta- 
bility' of  blank  verse  are  due  entirely  to  the  fact 
that  it  makes  fewer  and  simpler  demands  than  any 
other  of  our  verse-forms.  Undoubtedly  the  two 
poems  are  poetic  in  mood  and  substance,  and  there- 
fore are  properly  given  metrical  form,  but  their 
blank  verse  seems  to  me  to  be  reduced  to  its  lowest 
terms,  to  be  as  nearly  pedestrian  as  anything  could  be 
that  was  not  bald  prose.  I  find  in  it  very  rarely  the 
sonorous  music  of  Milton  or  the  brilliant  proofs  of 
technical  mastery  which  are  on  every  page  of  Ten- 


112 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

nyson.  In  some  moods,  therefore,  I  find  the  blank 
verse  very  disappointing — be  it  carefully  noted  that 
I  am  not  speaking  of  contents — for  in  so  many  lines 
the  cadences  are  mechanical,  and  the  expressions 
are  so  often  prosaic  that  I  get  chiefly  an  impression 
of  crude  verse  written  by  a  tyro.  At  other  times, 
however,  the  very  slightness  of  the  difference  which 
makes  it  verse  instead  of  prose  is  the  chief  source 
of  my  pleasure  in  it.  Beyond  a  doubt  Wordsworth 
could  not  have  given  the  material  of  these  poems 
such  acceptable  expression  in  any  other  English 
verse-form,  for  blank  verse  alone  is  sufficiently 
achromatic  to  transmit,  untouched  and  uncolored, 
these  naive  revelations  of  a  soul  so  astoundingly 
unhumorous,  and  yet  perhaps  on  that  account  the 
more  obviously  sincere  and  lofty  and  thoughtful  and 
gentle. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe:  1815,  Alastor. 

LI.       Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fern.  Uns. 

720     58.05     12.91     29.04     39.58     2.08  10.27 
1821,  Epipsychidion  (couplets) 

604     39.90     28.31     31.79    44-86 
Aug.,  1819,  The  Cenci,  Acts  I,  III  &  V, 

1488  lines,  11.35 


In  Alastor: 

Tot. 

Percentage 

of 

caesuras 

after 

Css.         Mid. 

End.             I 

2 

3 

522          31.41 

68.59          2.87 

9.19 

5-55 

*Run-on'  caesuras, 

0.76 

5.36 

3-25 

4,            5„ 

6                7 

8 

9 

23.56            7.85 

24.90        12.64 

10.91 

2.49 

10.34 

6.51 

0.95 

As  one  reads  Alastor  it  seems  much  what  might 
be  expected  from  so  determined  a  rebel  against  con- 
ventions, literary  and  otherwise,  but  the  details  of 
the  versification  do  not  reveal  Shelley's  iconoclasm. 
The  percentage  of  run-on  lines  is  almost  exactly 
that  of  Paradise  Lost,  though  the  endstopt  lines  are 
fewer;  there  are  somewhat  more  feminine  endings 

113 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

than  in  Paradise  Lost,  but  hardly  more  than  half  as 
many  as  in  Paradise  Regained,  and  none  of  Shelley's 
have  a  pronoun  as  a  final  syllable.  And  yet  Alastor 
reads  with  a  rush;  it  is  almost  as  sinuously  rapid 
as  the  beginning  of  the  Revolt  of  Islam;  it  has  an 
effect  of  speed  that  is  rare  in  Paradise  Lost.  The 
secret  is  surely  not  in  the  use  of  blank  verse,  or  in 
Shelley's  handling  of  it;  it  is  very  clearly,  it  seems 
to  me,  a  matter  of  the  poet's  individuality,  a  habit 
of  collocation  of  sound  which  produces  precisely  the 
same  effect  whether  the  poet  is  using  blank  verse, 
as  here,  or  couplet,  as  in  Epipsychidion,  or  even  the 
bulky  Spenserian  stanza,  as  in  the  Revolt  of  Islam 
or  Adonais. 

Although  Shelley  does  not  seem  to  avoid  feminine 
endings  in  run-on  lines  as  much  as  Keats  did,  he 
writes — "where'er  and — "whene'er"  in  run-on  lines, 
and  — "forever,"  which  he  uses  three  times,  occurs 
twice  in  endstopt  lines,  and  once  in  a  commastopt 
line.  That  Shelley's  avoidance  of  feminine  endings 
in  run-on  lines  in  Alastor  is  deliberate  is  shown  by 
his  practice  in  the  Cenci,  where  more  than  two-fifths 
of  his  feminine  endings  are  in  run-on  lines.  More- 
over, in  the  Cenci,  Shelley  does  occasionally  use 
feminine  endings  in  which  the  unstressed  syllable  is 
a  pronoun,  and  in  two  or  three  instances  "not." 


114 


JOHN  KEATS 

Keats,  John:  Dec,  i8i8-Sept.,  1819,  Hyperion, 
a  Fragment. 


LI       Run.    End.    Com. 

Unb. 

Fern.  Uns. 

883     34.00    32.00    34.00 

4340 

2.04    8.5- 

Nov.-Dec,  1819,  Hyperion, 

a   Vision,!     506     39.32     25.09     35-59 

49.01 

1.18     8.89 

Mar.,  1818,  Endymion 

(heroic  couplets) 

3905     47.11     28.04    24.85 

34.57 

Aug..  1819,  Lamia 

(coups.)        708     32.47     31-36     36.17 

38.13 

1819,  Otho,  Acts  I,  HI  &  V,  1 194 

9.21 

In  Hyperion,  a  Fragment: 

Tot.                            Percentage   of   caesuras 

after 

Cses.         Mid.           End.            i 

2 

3 

636          40.00          60.00          3.00 

11.80 

9.77 

*Run-on'       caesuras,                       0.62 

2.51 

2.67 

4567 

8 

9 

20.28          12.42          21.54        14.77 

5.18 

1.25 

7.54 

1.72 

0.31 

Keats,  Landor,  Arnold,  and  Browning — as  has 
already  been  said — are  the  only  poets  in  the  list  who 
have  an  almost  equal  distribution  of  run-on,  end- 
stopt,  and  commastopt  lines.  The  first  three  of  these 
men  were  notable  admirers  and  imitators  of  Greek 
thought  and  feeling.  Landor  and  Arnold  were  dis- 
tinctly anti-Romantic  in  the  austerely  formal  severity 
of  their  style,  and  Keats  clearly  belongs  with  them 
in  the  general  restraint  of  his  blank  verse,  at  least. 
The  Vision,  which  is  still  more  fragmentary  than 
the  Fragment,  is  not  materially  different  from  it  in 
its  proportion  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines,  and  is 
certainly  not  extreme  when  compared  with  the  47% 
of  run-on  lines  in  the  couplets  of  Endymion.  Hy- 
perion has  only  2%  of  feminine  endings,  as  against 
3.43%   of  feminine  rhymes  in  Endymion,  and  of 

1  Between  60  and  70  lines  are  substantially  the  same 
as  in  the  Fragment, 

115 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

these  i8  instances,  only  one  conies  in  a  run-on  line, 
while  in  two  other  run-on  lines,  Keats  has  written 
— ta'en  and — o'er.^  Perhaps  it  is  mere  accident  that 
in  the  Fragment  Keats  has  no  endings  like  — sanc- 
tuary, which  are  both  feminine  and  unstressed, 
for  three  of  the  six  in  the  Vision  are  of  this  kind. 
Keats's  restraint  in  the  use  of  the  devices  which  tend 
to  subordinate  or  obscure  the  line-rhythm  is  em- 
phasized by  the  large  number  of  unbroken  lines,  in 
which  he  is  exceeded  only  by  Gascoigne,  Surrey, 
and  Landor.  Here  again  comparison  with  his  coup- 
lets is  interesting,  for  in  Endymion  only  34.57%  of 
the  lines  are  unbroken.  The  increased  number  of 
unbroken  lines  in  his  blank  verse  was,  I  suspect,  a 
partial  compensation  for  the  loss  of  the  line  em- 
phasis which  rhyme  gives. 

Keats's  poetry,  although  written  within  a  very 
brief  period,  showed  a  constant  growth  in  restraint. 
H  his  using  blank  verse  only  toward  the  close  of 
his  life  was  accidental,  then  the  differences  between 
Endymion  and  Hyperion  are  largely  chronological, 
and  independent  of  the  actual  verse-form.  How- 
ever, it  should  be  remembered  that  the  Romantic 
movement  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  19th  century — 
while  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  ha\e  brought  back 
blank  verse,  for  that  had  been  done  at  least  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  earlier — brought  in  a  riot  of 
stanzas,  some  new,  but  mostly  old  ones  handled  in  a 
way  and  with  effects  hardly  dreamed  of  before.  The 
variety  of  experiments  in  rhyme  and  stanza  in  Ten- 
nyson's first  volume,  as  compared  with  the  bulk  of 

1  The  poets  in  our  list  practically  always  avoid  end- 
ing a  line  with  — taken,  or  — ever.  Shakspere,  on  the 
contrary,  who  uses  "taken"  and  "ta'en"  some  90  times 
apiece,  has  — ta'en  at  the  end  of  a  line  ten  times  but 
— taken  nine  times.  In  a  hasty  search  in  Bartlett'.* 
"Concordance,"  I  found  no  instance  of  — e'er  at  the 
end  of  a  line,  but  29  instances  of  — ever. 

116 


JOHN  KEATS 

the  product  of  his  last  fifty  years,  illustrates  this 
search  for  beautiful  and  splendid  effects,  and  also 
the  untamed,  youthful  determination  to  be  "differ- 
ent." That  this  unpruned  exuberance,  which  char- 
acterises Keats's  early  work,  should  have  shown 
itself  in  rhyme  and  stanza  was  almost  certainly  not 
accidental,  for  as  compared  with  the  warm  color  and 
luxuriously  decorative  rhymes  in  the  'loose'  couplets 
and  in  the  elaborate  stanzas  which  Keats  had  used 
earlier,  his  blank  verse  was  almost  as  severe  and 
classical  as  a  bit  of  Greek  sculpture. 

In  Hyperion^  in  none  of  the  feminine  endings  is 
the  unstressed  syllable  a  pronoun,  but  in  Otho — a 
rather  depressing  piece  of  hack-work — almost  one- 
fifth  are  of  that  kind.  It  will  be  noticed,  however, 
that  in  Otho  Keats  was  more  sparing  of  feminine 
endings  than  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  or  Tennyson 
were  in  their  plays. 

Because  Hyperion  was  an  avowed  imitation  of 
Milton,  it  has  unfortunately  occasioned  a  good  deal 
of  undiscriminating  criticism.  In  the  mere  details 
of  versification,  Cowper,  for  example,  is  much 
nearer  Milton  than  Keats  is,  but  surely  no  one  would 
think  of  calling  The  Task  Miltonic.  Keats  himself 
wrote  to  Reynolds  the  well-known  sentences:  *'I 
have  given  up  Hyperion — there  were  too  many  Mil- 
tonic  inversions  in  it — Miltonic  verse  cannot  be 
written  but  in  an  artful,  or,  rather,  artist's  humour 
.  .  .  Upon  my  soul  'twas  imagination — I  cannot 
make  the  distinction — every  now  and  then  there  is 
a  Miltonic  intonation — but  I  cannot  make  the  di- 
vision properly."  That  the  poem  is  far  from  Mil- 
tonic in  the  details  of  its  technique  is  evident;  as 
compared  with  Paradise  Lost,  Hyperion  has  only 
three-fifths  as  many  run-on  lines,  nearly  twice  as 
many  endstopt,  one-third  more  unbroken,  and  twice 
as    many    feminine    and   unstressed    endings.      Al- 

117 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

though  the  distribution  of  caesuras  is  on  the  whole 
not  noticeably  different,  Keats  has  only  about  half 
as  many  *run-on'  caesuras  as  Milton,  and  in  the 
proportions  of  them  after  the  various  syllables  he 
never  equals  Milton.  The  "Miltonic  intonations," 
then,  are  not  matters  of  blank  verse  technique  but  of 
rhetoric  and  style. 

Arnold,  Matthew  :  1853,  Sohrab  and  Rustum. 

LI.       Run.    End.    Com.    Unb.    Fern,  Uns. 
902    28.00    35.07     36.93     29.38     21       1.33 


Tot. 

Percentage  of 

caesuras  after 

Cses. 

Mid. 

End. 

I 

2               3 

825 

33.00 

67.00 

6.78 

14.30          9.00 

un-on 

caesuras, 

1.21 

569           3-39 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8                9 

18.00 

9.00 

21.09 

7.80 
3-27 

1370          0.36 
7.39          0.24 

In  its  studied  formality  and  its  avoidance  of  the 
ordinary  devices  of  blank  verse,  Sohrab  and  Rustum 
is  almost  as  remarkable  as  In  Memoriam  with  its 
monotonously  cadenced  stanza.^  Unstressed  end- 
ings are  noticeably  few,  for  the  other  19th  century 
poets  use  from  two  to  eight  times  as  many,  and 
Arnold  alone  of  his  group  takes  pains  to  avoid  femi- 
nine endings.  Moreover,  he  has  fewer  unbroken 
lines  than  any  other  19th  century  poet ;  Shelley,  who 
comes  nearest,  has  ten  per  cent  more.  Although 
Arnold  seems  like  Milton  and  a  number  of  others 
in  having  only  about  one-third  of  his  caesuras  in  the 
middle  of  feet,  he  is  the  only  one  who  has  over  10% 
of  his  caesuras  after  the  2d,  4th,  6th,  and  8th  syl- 
lables, and  only  there. 

^ — estuaries  and  — rivers;  — iron  and  — precipices  arc 
probably  not  feminine  endings. 

2  See  "The  Stanza  of  In  Memoriam,"  in  Modern  Lan- 
guage Notes,   Dec,  1906. 


118 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

That  Arnold's  versification  is  as  formal  as  his 
rhetoric  is  evident  when  we  compare  his  use  of 
elaborate,  formal  similes  with  the  effect  of  rhyme 
which  his  habit  of  repetition  gives.  Seven  times 
he  repeats  a  word,  as  in: 

And,  from  the  fluted  spine  atop,  a  plume 

Of  horsehair  waved,  a  scarlet  horsehair  plume. 

Again  we  find : 

And  Rustum  followed  his  own  blow,  and  fell 
To  his  knees,  and  with  his  fingers  clutch'd  the  sand; 
And  now  might  Sohrab  have  unsheathed  his  sword. 
And  pierced  the  mighty  Rustum  while  he  lay 
Dizzy,  and  on  his  knees,  and  choked  with  sand; 
But  he  looked  on,  and  smiled,  nor  bared  his  sword. 

In  a  passage  near  the  end,  Sohrab  asks  to  be  taken 
back  to  Seistan,  and  Rustum  promises  with  almost 
a  repetition  of  Sohrab's  words,  so  that  the  line-end- 
ings " — Seistan,  — me,  — friends,  — earth,  — bones, 
— all"  of  Sohrab's  speech  are  echoed  by  Rustum's 
" — Seistan,  — thee,  — friends,  — earth,  — bones,  — 
all."  Only  rhymeless  verse  would  lend  itself  to  such 
a  device,  but  the  device  is  rhetorical,  not  metrical.^ 
Arnold  has  only  two  cases  of  actual  rhyme,  but  in 
both,  the  rhymes  link  sentences. 

1  If  Rustum's  six  lines  had  followed  Sohrab's  imme- 
diately, one  might  find  in  the  two  speeches  a  sugges- 
tion of  the  sestina,  but  even  the  sestina  does  not  repeat 
the  rhyme  words  in  the  same  order. 


119 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 
Browning,  Robert: 

Ll.    Run.    End.  Com.  Unb.       Fern.  Uns. 

1832,  Pauline 1031    46.66    20.42    32.92  43.35         5.00  3.30 

1835,  Paracelsus 3813    48.00    30.00    32.00  35.64       10.00  4.30 

1837,  (Strafford),  1 2202  5.72  4,31 

1841  (Pippa  Passes) 772  9.71  5.70 

1842,  (K.  Victor  &  K.  C).     1622  8.20  6.70 

1843,  (Return  of  Druses) . .      738    (Acts  1  &  V)  9.87  5.40 

1843,  (Blot  in  'Scutcheon)     1313  4.11  6.32 

1844,  (Colombe's  Birthday)    760    (Acts  1  &  V)  6.31  9.60 
1846,  (Soul's  Tragedy),  1..      402    (Act  II  is  prose)  8.45  4.72 

1846,  (Luria)  2 1821  4.22  7.79 

'4-'5-  Transcendentalism.        52    17.30    55.76    26.94  51.92      none  3.84 

How  it  Strikes  a  Con- 
temporary.       116    20.69    38.78    40.53  50.86        0.86  6.90 

Artemis  Prologizes..      121    47.15    20.66    32.19  46.28      none  10.00 

Epistle  of  Karshish..      312    31.41    40.06    28,53  4Q-35        0.96  11. 21 

Fra  Lippo  Lippi 380    23.94    42.63    33.42  38.42        1.57  3-94 

Andrea  del  Sarto —      267    18.72    48.31    32.97  28.46      none  5.24 
The    Bishop  Orders 

His  Tomb  120    21.16    34.16    40.68  50.00      none  5.82 

Bp.  Blougram'sApol.    1014    26.72    44.18    29.10  38.26        0.18  8.00 

Cleon 353    26.06    39.09    34.85  40.00      none  8.78 

1853,  (In  a  Balcony) 919  2^  6.20 

1864,  Death  in  the  Desert     687    i9-6S    34-64    45-71  39-57      none  5.00 
1864,  Caliban  upon   Sete- 

bos 297    18.85    36-3&    44-79  34-oo      none  2.60 

1864,  Mr.  Sludge,   the  Me- 
dium  cai040    26.50    36.15    42.35  21.53        0.76  7.88 

'68-9,  The   Ring    and  the 

Book 20973    30.53    29.47    40.00  40.16*      0.13  8.26 

1871,  Balaustion's  Adv  —  ca28oo    30.35    37-32*32.33  32.89        35  9.03 

1871,  Prince Hohen.-Schw.    1005    36.71    32.50    30.76  37.31      none  n.90 

1873.  Red  Cot.  N't  Cap  C    1030    33.49    34-27    32-24  40.67        0.29  17.57 

(ist  Section) 

1875,  Aristophanes'  Apol.     1008    29.16    32.83    38.01  35.41         2  ^  18.05 

1875,  The  Inn  Album 3080    42.53    35-^4    21.63  28.24         2^  9.41 

1876,  Cenciaja 300    47.33    28.66    24.01  40.33         i^  21.66 

1884,  Ferishtah's  Fancies.    1612    41.18    33.12    25.70  28.22      none  10.98 

1889,  Imperante  Augusto.      163    30.06    46.50    23.44  32.51       none  10.42 

1889,  Development 115    25.21    40.00    34-79  29.56      none  13.91 

24  Poems 41689    33.24    31.85    34.91 

24  Poems< 31307  36.05 

33  Poems 52238  2.15  9.11 

10  Poems  (down  to '46) .. .  14474  6.58 

23  Poems  (after '46) 37764  0.16 

Sordello,  l-IIl  (cplts.)....    3036    59.68    16.04    24.28  28.52 

In  Pauline,  Bp.  Blougram,  R.  &  B.,  I,  II,  III,  VI,  8750  lines : 

Percentage  of  caesuras  after 
Tot. 

Caes.  Mid.  End.    123         4         56789 
6831  51.51  48.49  7-48  8.85  10.35  17.42  16.39  13.10  13.67  8.94  3-6i 

'Run-on'  caesuras:                   0.76  2.59    3.61  4.33  3.76  1.46 
1  Titles  in  ( )  are  plays.    2  Fem.  endings   in    Act  1,  7.44%;    Act   II, 

4.78;  Act  III,  4-50;  Act  IV,   1.18;     Act  V,  2.67.  3  — Norbert,   —echo. 

*  For  Bks.  I-VI,   10382  lines.       s  — diest,  —irrevocable    (twice).  ^  — 

hierarchy,  —seven.     ^  — adversary,  —cignofedel.  *  —Croce.     *  In  six 
passages,  88  lines  of  stichomythy. 


120 


ROBERT    BROWNING 

Browning's  first  poems,  Pauline  and  Paracelsus, 
are  not  equalled  by  any  later  long  poem  in  their 
proportion  of  run-on  lines.  In  the  Ring  and  the 
Book,  the  proportion  varies  in  the  different  books 
from  27.17  to  33.41,  although  in  the  later  books  the 
percentage  grows  sHghtly  smaller.  In  four  poems, 
all  rather  short,  the  percentage  of  run-on  lines  falls 
below  20.  Although  Browning's  endstopt  lines  vary 
from  20  to  over  55%,  it  will  be  noticed  that  the 
average  of  31.85  is  not  far  from  the  mean. 

The  unbroken  lines  vary  in  proportions  almost 
as  much  as  the  run-on  and  endstopt,  with  a  tendency 
on  the  whole,  though  with  exceptions,  to  have  man> 
unbroken  lines  when  the  run-on  lines  are  few.  As 
in  the  case  of  Tennyson,  the  only  other  poet  in  our 
list  who  wrote  much  blank  verse  through  a  long 
period  of  time,  the  differences  in  metrical  details 
are  of  mood  and  treatment  rather  than  of  chron- 
ology. 

In  the  matter  of  feminine  endings  alone  does 
Browning  seem  clearly  to  have  changed  his  habit. 
His  plays  are  not  different  from  his  non-dramatic 
verse  in  this,  unless  we  argue  that  both  their  dates 
and  their  use  of  feminine  endings  are  significant. 
I  feel  pretty  sure  that  the  number  of  feminine  end- 
ings in  the  plays  is  purely  a  matter  of  date,  for 
their  number  tends  on  the  whole  to  decrease,  and  in 
Luria  the  percentage  visibly  falls  off  from  act  to  act. 
After  1846,  feminine  endings  practically  disappear, 
so  that,  as  we  can  judge  from  the  usage  of  other 
poets,  Browning  must  have  definitely  avoided  them. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  apparently  an  irregular  com- 
pensation, unstressed  endings  which,  as  compared 
with  the  other  poets,  he  never  avoided,  grow  in  his 
latest  poems  so  much  more  numerous  than  in  any 
other  poet,  that  it  seems  obvious  that  he  at  least 
experimented  with  them  as  a  metrical  device.  He  is 

121 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

the  only  poet  in  our  list  of  whom  we  can  say  this 
with  any  assurance. 

As  compared  with  Tennyson's  blank  verse,  that  of 
Browning  shows  a  considerably  wider  range  of 
metrical  experiment.  It  is  not  necessary  to  argue 
that  this  difference  of  practice  is  to  the  credit  or  the 
discredit  of  either  poet,  but  it  may  point  to  a  funda- 
mental difference  in  their  method  of  treatment. 
Tennyson  for  the  most  part  wrote  narrative;  prob- 
ably even  the  monologue  form  of  such  shorter  poems 
as  St.  Simeon^  Ulysses,  Tithonus,  or  Lucretius,  was 
affected  in  its  general  metrics  by  the  poet's  narrative 
habit.  Browning,  needless  to  say,  was  dramatic  in 
his  habit,  even  though  his  characters  spoke  unceas- 
ing monologue.  Now,  this  mental  attitude  of 
Browning's,  along  with  his  admitted  subtlety  of 
thought-processes  if  not  of  thought  itself,  and  along 
with  his  apparent  carelessness  and  perversity,  means 
that  he  was  often  more  interested  in  forcing  his 
instrument  to  express  his  thought  than  he  was  in 
bringing  out  the  richest,  fullest,  or  clearest  tones 
of  the  instrument.  Throughout,  Browning's  work 
seems  like  that  of  Shakspere's  later  periods,  where 
a  predominant  interest  in  thought  did  not  imply 
either  neglect  of  or  ignoring  of  form,  but  only  the 
finished  technician's  experimenting — a  tendency 
which  Tennyson  did  not  exhibit,  in  his  blank  verse 
at  least,  to  such  an  extent  as  Browning  did.  In  a 
very  general  way,  then,  the  larger  differences  be- 
tween Browning  and  Tennyson  show  in  their  versi- 
fication. 

As  for  Browning — and  I  am  speaking  now  as  a 
student  of  metrics — I  find  myself  more  and  more 
protesting  at  the  falsity  of  the  dictum  of  a  late 
brilliant  and  paradoxical  critic  who  concluded  a 
wonderful  page  about  Meredith  with:  "Meredith  is 
a  prose  Browning.     And  so  is  Browning."     The 


ROBERT   BROWNING 

Ring  and  the  Book,  which  long  repelled  me  by  its 
length  and  substance,  has  proved  on  acquaintance 
as  wonderful  in  its  blank  verse  as  in  other  respects, 
and  I  cordially  endorse  Professor  Corson's  declara- 
tion: "And  it  is  always  verse — although  the  reader 
has  but  a  minimum  of  metre  consciousness."  ("Pri- 
mer of  Eng.  Verse,"  22^.Y 

1  Because  Browning  wrote  the  20,000  lines  of  the 
Ring  and  the  Book  in  two  years,  as  compared  with  the 
nine  years  which  Milton  spent  on  the  10,000  of  Paradise 
Lost,  or  the  fifty  years  through  which  Tennyson  was 
writing  the  11,000  lines  of  the  Idylls,^  one  might  expect 
Browning's  work  to  show  less  variation  than  the  others 
between  the  different  books.  As  the  accompanying 
table  shows,  however,  the  percentages  in  all  the  men 
vary  much  less  than  one  might  expect.  The  reasons 
are  probably  two:  first — especially  in  the  case  of 
Browning  and  Milton — that  the  poems  in  question  were 
the  work  of  mature,  thoroughly  practised  men;  the 
other,  that  there  is  much  less  variety  either  of  mood 
or  treatment  between  the  different  parts  of  the  same 
poem  than  there  is  between  these  particular  poems  and 
others  by  the  same  men.  Range  of  percentage  in 

Run.        End.        Unb. 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  6.25         11.22        12.03 

Paradise  Lost,  14.88         7.87        13.31 

The  Idylls  of  the  King,  7.39        12.15         19-63 


123 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord: 

LI.       Run.    End.     Com.    Unb.    Fern.  Uns. 

1827,  Timbuctoo,! 

248  58.46  14.91  26.63  49-59  2.82  9.27 

1828,  The  Lover's  Tale, 

1459    41.94     18.71     39-35     44-14    3-97    6.44 
1842,  St.  Simeon, 

220    26.81     31.36    41.83     36.81    none   5.45 
1842,  Ulysses, 

70    42.85     28.57     28.58    37.15    none    5.71 
1847,  The  Princess, 

3144    40.07    24.33    35-6o    34-70    1.36    (i.^^ 
i860,  Tithonus, 

'jd    31.57    27.63    40.80    56.07   none    5.26 
1864,  Enoch  Arden, 

911     30.29    27.77    41.94    46.00    4.61     5.92 
1868,  Lucretius, 

280    47-85     14.64    37-51     41-78    2.14    8.57 
1835-85,  The  Idylls, 

11321     33.61     26.88     39.51     44.96     2.34     5.39 

9     Poems,       17729     35.91     25.42     38.67     42.94     2.37     5.88 
1875,  Queen  Mary,  I.  4,  5;  H-  3;  IV.  2,  3, 

1220    lines  21.00 

1879,  Becket  Prol.  I.  i ;  II.  i ;  IV.  2,  779 

lines,  22.85 

The  two  plays,  1999  lines,  21.76 

In  the  Idylls,  11321  lines: 

Tot.  Percentage  of  caesuras  after 

Cses.  Mid.  End.  123 

8127  46.14  53.86  6.92  9.39        11.60 

'Run-on'  caesuras,  0.84  2.31  5.47 

456789 
21.39  11.02  13.61         13.39  9.52  3.25 

5-21  4.73  1.29 

From  the  first  draft  of  Timbuctoo  in  1827  to 
Balin  and  Balan  in  1885,  Tennyson's  blank  verse 
extends  over  nearly  sixty  years.    With  two  excep- 

1  Took  Chancellor's  Medal  in  1829,  but  composed 
1827. 


124 


ALFRED,   LORD   TENNYSON 

tions,  however,  the  metrical  variations  are  indicative 
not  of  chronology  (and  therefore  of  change  of  met- 
rical habit),  but  only  of  variety  of  theme  and  of 
rhetorical  treatment.  The  metrics  of  the  individual 
Idylls  afford  no  indication  of  chronology  except  that 
the  four  earliest  have  slightly  fewer  run-on  lines 
and  somewhat  more  endstopt  lines  than  the  later 
ones.  Timhuctoo,  the  earliest  of  the  poems,  and 
the  nearest  to  Paradise  Lost  in  its  proportion  of 
run-on  and  endstopt  lines,  is  much  more  extreme  in 
those  respects  than  any  of  the  later  poems  except 
Lucretius.  Of  the  four  long  poems,  the  Love?s 
Tale,  which  is  the  earliest,  has  more  run-on  lines 
than  the  Princess,  and  as  many  unbroken  lines  as 
the  Idylls.  Arden  and  the  Idylls  have  distinctly 
fewer  run-on  and  more  unbroken  lines  than  the 
Princess;  a  relation  which  suggests  that  similar 
differences  between  Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Re- 
gained are  not  accidental.  It  may  be  that  run-on 
and  unbroken  lines  tend  to  compensate  for  each 
other,  that  a  poet  may  secure  freedom  of  movement 
by  a  preponderance  of  either. 


125 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles  :  1864,  Atalanta 
in  Calydon;  1876,  Erechtheus. 

LI.       Run.     End.     Com.     Unb.    Fern.  Uns. 
Atalantai  1373     42.82     18.28     38.90     39.83     32       4.29 

Erechtheus^       977     67.55       4.81     27.64    41.96     none     1.33 


2  Poems, 

2350 

53.14    12 

.66    34.20 

40.69 

3.06 

18S1,  Mary 

Stuart, 

5046 

] 

[-34  « 

In  Atalanta 

Tot. 

Percentage  of 

caesuras 

after 

Cses. 

Mid. 

End. 

I 

2 

3 

.-o    ^'^^, 

50.42 

4958 

10.93 

11.88 

8.70 

Run-on 

caesuras, 

5-30 

5-62 

4.24 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9, 

15-92 

10.72 

8.91 

18.90 

12.95 

1. 16 

10.82 

8.69 

0.53 

In  Erechtheus: 

Cais. 

Mid. 

End. 

I 

2 

3 

..    ^^^ 

64-57 

35-42 

5-32 

8.62 

4-54 

Run-on 

caesuras. 

329 

5.64 

2.03 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

7-52 

12.69 

7.68 

36.67 

11.60 

2.19 

28.52 

9.71 

0.63 

2  Poems: 

Cses. 

Mid. 

End. 

I 

2 

3 

.r.'58o 

56.13 

43-87 

8.67 

10.50 

7.02 

Run-on 

caesuras, 

4-49 

4-74 

3.22 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

12.53 

11.51 

8.41 

26.07 

12.42 

1.S8 

17.97 

905 

0.63 

1  In  both  plays  I  have  omitted  not  only  the  rhymed 
portions  but  the  occasional  pages  of  stichomythy. 

2  — birdwist,  — infatuated,  — seeing. 

3  68  cases:  22  times  words  like  — secretary;  14  times 
phrases  like  — know  him;  17  times  words  like  — seeing. 
There  are  only  4  doubtful  cases  in  — able;  only  one 
instance  of  two  extra  syllables;  — szvorn  to  me,  3.  i.  540; 


126 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Both  Atalanta  and  Erechtheus  have  to  the  drama 
something  of  the  relation  that  oratorios  have  to 
grand  opera.  The  blank  verse  which  is  the  chief 
metre  of  both  poems  gives  way  in  choruses  and 
occasional  other  passages  to  a  variety  of  metres,  and 
the  dialogue  is  never  broken  with  any  intent  of  the 
illusion  of  the  stage.  Wherever  the  dialogue  is 
rapid,  the  speakers  have  at  least  their  line  apiece, 
and  almost  invariably  end  a  speech  at  the  end  of  a 
line. 

Comus  and  Samson  Agonistes,  and  the  Princess 
with  its  intercalated  songs,  seem  pale  and  timid  de- 
partures from  convention  when  compared  with 
Swinburne's  bold  use  of  lyric  measures  in  the  most 
intense  passages  of  these  poems;  but  they  are  not 
less  remarkable  for  the  amount  and  character  of  the 
changes  in  their  blank  verse.  In  Atalanta,  to  be  sure, 
the  proportions  of  run-on  and  endstopt  lines  are  by 
no  means  exceptional,  but  the  percentage  of  run-on 
lines  in  Erechtheus  is  exceeded  only  by  Newcomb, 
and  approached  only  by  the  first  two  books  of  Para- 
dise Lost,  by  Philips'  Blenheim,  and  by  Akenside's 
revised  third  Canto,  while  the  percentage  of  end- 
stopt lines  is  the  lowest  I  have  any  record  of;  even 
the  sum  of  the  endstopt  and  commastopt  lines  is 
less  than  in  any  of  the  other  men  except  Newcomb 
and  Shelley. 

The  chief  distinction  of  both  poems,  however,  is 
their  distribution  of  caesuras.  In  Atalanta,  the 
10.93%  after  the  ist  syllable  is  considerably  greater 
than  in  the  other  men ;  Browning,  who  comes  near- 
est, has  only  7.48%.  After  the  4th  syllable,  only 
Landor  has  so  few,  and  after  the  6th,  only  Gas- 
coigne.     After  the  7th  syllable,  on  the  other  hand, 

in  no  case  is  the  extra  syllable  heavy.  In  run-on  lines 
— ta'en  occurs  once,  — howsoe'er  once,  and  — soe'er 
twice. 

127 


ENGLISH  BLANK  VERSE 

only  Akenside,  Glover,  and  Landor  have  nearly  so 
many ;  after  the  8th  syllable  only  Arnold  has  more, 
and  Shelley  alone  approaches  him.  After  the  9th 
syllable,  nine  poets  have  as  many  or  more,  but  only 
Browning  and  Tennyson  materially  exceed  Swin- 
burne. (For  similar  proportions  in  Queen  Mary, 
see  p.  25,  note.)  Swinburne's  excess  of  caesuras 
after  the  ist  syllable  is  due  to  his  habit  in  this  poem 
of  running  a  sentence  over  into  the  following  line 
just  one  syllable,  for  he  has  more  than  four  times 
as  many  'run-on'  caesuras  after  the  ist  syllable  as 
Landor,  Wordsworth,  or  Arnold— the  only  ones  who 
have  more  than  1%.  Of  'run-on'  caesuras  after  the 
7th  syllable,  Shelley  and  Cowper  have  as  many,  and 
Glover  and  Akenside  have  more;  but  after  the  8th 
syllable,  only  Milton  and  Arnold  approach  Swin- 
burne. 

The  differences  between  Atalanta  and  Erechtheus 
are  very  much  more  striking  than  any  I  have  noted 
in  the  work  of  other  poets.  As  compared  with  Ata- 
lanta, Erechtheus  has  fewer  caesuras  after  the  first 
four  syllables  (only  26%  as  compared  with  47.43% 
in  Atalanta),  and  has  practically  all  of  the  conse- 
quent increase  in  the  second  half  of  the  line  after 
the  7th  syllable — 36.67%,  a  percentage  not  only 
about  twice  as  great  as  any  one  else  has  at  that 
place,  but  not  equalled  at  any  other  place  in  the  line, 
except  by  Somervile  after  the  6th  and  by  Gascoigne 
and  Surrey  after  the  4th  syllable.  The  'run-on' 
caesuras  are  similarly  concentrated  after  the  7th  syl- 
lable, for  the  28.52%  of  Erechtheus  is  twice  that  of 
Akenside  even.  Erechtheus  also  reverses  the  divi- 
sion of  nine  of  the  poets,  and  has  two-thirds  of  its 
caesuras  in  the  middle  instead  of  at  the  ends  of  feet. 

In  contrast  with  these  extravagances  of  versifica- 
tion, it  is  especially  interesting  to  note  that  Swin- 
burne has  a  proportion  of  unbroken  lines  which  is 

128 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

not  extraordinary,  that  he  uses  fewer  unstressed 
endings  than  the  other  19th  century  men  (except 
Arnold,  and  in  Erechtheus  the  percentage  is  exactly 
that  of  Sohrab  and  Rustum),  and  that  he  not  only 
avoids  feminine  endings  in  Atalanta  and  Erech- 
theus, but  in  Mary  Stuart  uses  fewer  than  any  other 
dramatist  I  know. 


129 


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LD  21-100m-12.'46(A2012si6)4120 


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